


the age of blossoms

by VaginalCreamPuffs



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Angst, F/F, both in love with other people before finding each other, i think this is a slowburn, slowburn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-01-21 03:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21292553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VaginalCreamPuffs/pseuds/VaginalCreamPuffs
Summary: Christen ends up at Tobin's apartment late on a work-night. She didn’t intend for them to end up like this: with her fingers through Tobin's newly washed hair and a tongue in her mouth. In fact, she didn’t intend to come to Tobin's place at all. What she had wanted to do when she precariously slid on her jeans and carelessly throw on a big hoodie — to hide the fact that she couldn’t care less for a bra — was to take a short trip to the liquor store for a fifth of vodka, and maybe even a pack of cigarettes. But half way through the walk all she could think about was Tobin's last words to her when they last saw each other a week ago.
Relationships: Tobin Heath/Alex Morgan, Tobin Heath/Christen Press, Verónica Boquete/Christen Press
Comments: 61
Kudos: 341





	1. requiem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> christen has hurt before

They weren’t close. Christen thinks its far-fetched to even say they were friends at all. Kelley often dragged Christen to drinks at the local dive bar (according to Kelley it's for her to destress because Christen is almost always worrying about something, but Christen thinks she just doesn’t want to look pathetically alone at a bar) and Tobin was always conveniently there, always with a scotch glass in her hand and always talking to a different girl. The first time she ever saw Tobin she was sure she felt someone's eyes on her, and when she did a quick turn of the head to look over her shoulders Kelley had stopped her ranting to look also, before spotting a familiar face to call over. Tobin trotted over to their side, Christen notices a slight limp to her stance that was impressively hidden, and Kelley very enthusiastically introduced Tobin to Christen as her surfing buddy. 

“It's crazy to run into you anywhere else but the beach.” Tobin exclaimed with a rough pat on Kelley's back. 

Kelley smiled wide, matching her enthusiasm, “Dude, I think I'm more shocked that you don't live on the beach and own any clothes other than Hawaiian shirts and wetsuits.” They both shared a whole-hearted laugh, then Kelley abruptly turned to christen and gestured at her, “Tobin, this is Christen, my best friend and roommate.”

Tobin looked satisfied, as though she'd been waiting for Kelley to finally introduced the lost looking girl. “What’s up, Christen!” She extended her hand and Christen grabbed it confidently. They exchanged a glance and Tobin seemed even happier with the way Christen doesn’t cower.

“Well, it's been good seeing you, Kelley.” Tobin stood up and nodded at the freckled girl, “And great meeting you, Christen.” She smiled at her, and the confident, flirtatious nature behind it doesn’t get past Christen. “I'd love to stay and chat but I told this girl I wouldn’t be longer than five minutes.” She pointed to the opposite direction of the bar with her thumb and grinned apologetically. 

“You do what you gotta do, Tobin. I'll see you tomorrow morning.” Kelley waved her off with a guffaw.

“I didn’t realize you knew anybody named Tobin.” Christen said after Tobin had walked away, the limp going unnoticed. 

“I told you about having a surfing buddy, didn't I?” Kelley replied nonchalantly, sipping from her piña colada.

Christen's eye contact did its best to remain on Kelley, but occasionally she would secretly drift off to see where Tobin walked off to, “Yeah, but you always talked to me about your friends by name.” she sees Tobin sitting down next to a curly-haired woman. “That's because you've met and talked to all of them, I didn't know if you were ever going to meet Tobin. I tried to bring up hanging out outside of surfing but we both got too distracted by the waves. And plus... you never really asked.” Tobin's caressing the woman's face now, and she's leaning coolly against the bar table with a dangling leg and relaxed posture as if this comes way too easily for her. Christen looks away when she starts to lean in.

“By the way, how are things with you and Vero?” Kelley asks, gesturing with the cocktail umbrella in her hand. 

Christen answers monotonously, a bit of apathy in her voice, “We're doing good. Why?”

“Christen...” Kelley starts with a sigh. Christen cuts her off immediately with more aggression than she had intended, “What? Kelley, you asked how we were doing so now I'm just answering you.”

“And now you're snapping at me.” Kelley rolls her eyes, saying like she'd proven a point, not out of triumph but rather of annoyance like nothing she's been saying is getting through. 

Christen deflates, “Sorry. There's just... lots of things on my mind right now.”

Kelley doesn't say anything else, just looks at her for a while like she's trying to read Christen, and given that they've known each other for over a decade, Christen figures that she already had. The latter half-expected her to break out into a passionate speech about falling out of love and how she shouldn’t be settling down any moment now, however, Kelley just says simply, “At some point you're gonna have to admit that you're miserable.”

Christen looks down, and Kelley doesn’t say anything else, until she yawns, “Holy shit, I am sleepy. I think the bartender went a little heavy on the rum today.” So Christen takes that as her cue to leave. She pays for the half finished glass of red wine that she only ordered to keep her hand busy, takes her jacket, and followed her home.

❧ ❧ ❧

With her and Vero, Christen thinks they were good.

They'd met in college when Christen was 19 and Vero was 21. All fired up on youth and realized passion, she'd thought she saw the same fire in Vero's eyes, who was funny and intelligent and the way she would reach to tuck Christen's hair around her ear always left her a fumbling mess. They found a bond over soccer and talked and talked for days on end over cocktails and empty porches at parties until Christen finally kissed Vero. It was easy to fall in love with the way Vero held her and whispered sweet words of reassurance in her ears as they slow danced to the waves of the nearby beach. Christen's made a sanctuary out of Vero's arms and loved her like she was made to. Vero had found a well-paying job right out of college and she had been saving ever since her first paycheck under the promise that she'll one day buy a house for them before Christen reaches 30. It would only make Christen swoon even more. There are days where they would stay up all night to fantasize about their future home, calculating the costs of each room and how they wanted to decorate it, and Christen would let her mind drift away from numbers and deadlines at work to daydream about one day sharing that same living space with the love of her life. Hours poured into house plans and budget plans but now they're all collecting dust under her bed because Christen had spent years loving Vero but now she is 25 and Vero is 27 and nothing feels the same anymore.

See, Vero was easy. Falling in love with her came without time or doubt, like a free fall into love the moment they first shook hands, without a parachute to hold her back, without a definite target for her to land on. Christen had taken an immediate liking to the way Vero purred out her name for the first time in that crazily attractive accent and almost melted at the confident handshake from her strong, toned hand. And when Christen had finally confessed her feeling and kissed her at a late-night college party, fueled on alcohol and empty stomachs, Vero immediately kissed her back like she's wanted it her whole life and they started being an official couple the next day. With Vero there was no chasing, no waiting for Christen to realize her feelings, no sleepless nights wondering if Vero felt the same way. She never quite believed the fairy tales in love at first sight, that is until she met Vero, and she could never quite believed her luck, either, when Vero liked her back. Christen's friends had often expressed their envy of her, to be able to find love and a lasting relationship so young into adulthood. Christen used to love the easiness as much as they did, loved how she could wake up and know exactly what her day spent with Vero would be like, or how she could plan out a whole month or even year and have nothing that would deviate from the plan. She used to. But now that easiness has bored her, burned her out from a relationship that only seemed to flow without ebbing.

She spends some nights of every week at Vero's apartment. It's been a tradition since she'd graduated college and had found a job that allowed her to live in the same city as Vero. The visits used to be frequent; she'd come over every night and stay for entire weekends. But now the most she would stay would be for dinner and only sometimes would she stay for sex. She rarely stays overnight anymore, it bothered Vero immensely and Christen knows she could see right through her excuse of not wanting to be late to work. Christen has more than a few of her own outfits in Vero's closet that could be worn to work, and she's aware of that, but Vero never calls her out on it and Christen thinks it’s one of the reasons for the cracks of their relationship.

Christen knows what's coming. It's been preying for them both and by now it's looming over both of their shoulders like a shadow, ever so noticeable by everyone including them, but they can't seem to talk about it. She pushes it down, though, afraid to come to terms with the fading feelings and the consequences that comes with it even to herself. She'd spent so long planning out this life for herself, visions of a life that included Vero, a dog or two, and a house they'll build for themselves if it had to be out of their own damn hands and pairs of hopeful eyes. That was the future she'd always dreamed of; a stability only Vero could seem to bring. 

She lies in Vero's arms one night with a thin blanket precariously covering their naked bodies. Vero's arms are tight around her body and Christen's hand runs through the curls of her hair. Christen reminisces the position their bodies were in after they had sex for the first time, which was distinctly similar to this. She tries to chase that feeling again, of her nineteen-year-old self running her hand through Vero's hair after their first night together, feeling as if her heart might burst and she could only scream to let it all out. She wants to recreate the pure joy and domesticity of playing with her girlfriend's hair, but now she only does it because it felt familiar, that she should do this because it used to bring her so much joy. She thinks about the humor in how their touches used to feel like they could linger on naked skin for a lifetime, but now their kisses are getting shorter and nights with Vero seemed longer than they ever were.

After a bout of silence, Vero speaks into Christen's hair, “Christen.” She called out, hand rubbing circles on a spot of Christen's back. “Move in with me.” 

Christen sighed, knowing they've had this conversation one too many times before, “Vero, I love you. But I'm not ready for us to live together. You know this.”

“Is it because you don't think I could take care of you? I just got a raise earlier this week, I can cover rent for both of us.”

“Vero,” Christen says, frustratedly, “you know well that's not the reason why.”

“Then what is it?” Vero removes her arms around Christen, sounding equally as frustrated. “You might as well just say the reason why you've been so distant with me these past few months. You think I don't notice shit, but I do.”

“Tell me what the reason is, then, if you know me so fucking well.” Christen challenges, but recoils internally because she's never been able to admit that she's fallen completely out of love with Vero. And tonight might be the night where she'll have to face the truth.

“You don't love me anymore.” Vero spat out, “And you think that I don't notice or that I don't care when you started ignoring my texts and calls. You don't understand how much I needed to feel your body next to me most nights!”

“You never asked!” Christen borderline yells, “You never fucking tell me anything and you're acting like it's my fault that I don't know what you want!”

Vero had suddenly stopped yelling at this point and looked taken back as if Christen had hit a nerve, surprising Christen when her next sentence came out brittle and vulnerable, “I was scared to ask anything from you. I had an inkling that your feelings for me were slipping away and if I kept asking things from you that you would become sick of me. Guess it was gonna backfire on me either way.” She ended with a shrug of pure helplessness and defeat, wiping away constant tears that had started to fall since the start of their argument.

“Oh,” was all Christen could uttered, and then, “I'm so sorry, Vero. Please don't take this the wrong way, I- I still care about you, and I don't think I'll ever stop caring about you, it-it's just...” she stammered, desperate to find her wordings, but: “I- I guess I've got nothing to say.”

“If you still care about me and my feelings at all, Christen,” Vero takes a deep breath, “please, leave right now, and don't come back.” She pauses for another moment, and continued with a scoff, “And you know what the worst part is? I don't think I'll ever stop loving you, and you could’ve spared me this fucking heartbreak. But here we are; here I am.”

Christen wipes away a tear she didn't realize was falling and puts on the last piece of her outfit, gathering the last of her belongings from Vero's closet before heading to the front door. There, she stalls a little, knowing that tonight she'll be saying goodbye to the familiarity that was Vero, that once she walks out things will be different, that the comfortability in a stable future that Vero promises will be thrown out the window. Taking a deep breath of finality, she steps out the door, turning back to get one last look at the apartment she's learned to familiarize, where every nooks and crannies she had memorized by now would be forced to forgotten. She walks in a beeline of uncertainty back to her car, doesn't look back once. She threw herself in her car and drove herself home in a blur. All is now harmed.

It was a mere 11 o'clock when she arrived home, so Kelley was still in the living room with a cup of tea and a brainless late-night reality show in the background when Christen stumbles in. Kelley looked up from her phone and was immediately taken back by the dazed look of pure regret and shock in her friend's eyes.

“Christen, are you ok?”

It wasn't until now when Kelley had asked that it registered with Christen just how “done” she and Vero are. She tries to answer but nothing dares to come out and so her answer turns into a series of an uttered “Vero... we- we're-”. The question flows through her like an electric shock and wakes her from the trance and now she's given up on answering and just crumbles to the floor in tears. Kelley rushes to pick her up from the floor and to the couch where Christen sobs into her shoulder.

“I knew it had to come but I never could've guessed how much it hurts.”

And Kelley wordlessly threw her hands around Christen and gave her a hug that would take the breath out her lungs in its tightness. It was exactly what she needed. She cried and cried and Kelley's shoulder took away half the burden for her but still she fell asleep exhausted. When she woke up they were both in the same position; Kelley's sound asleep, arms still snugged around her.

___

Having to go to work hours after the most dramatic breakup of her life was surprisingly not the hardest thing Christen had to go through. She congratulates herself on having to only excuse herself to the restroom to sob twice today, and both times none of her coworkers noticed. When she came home from work that evening, Kelley had been all dressed up and waiting for her on the couch, almost giving Christen the first heart attack of her life because she yelled the moment Christen closes the door behind her, “Christen! Listen, I know you're having a rough day, and as your best friend I am obligated to take you out tonight. Properly. So get dolled up, and leave your wallet at home. Seriously, not one cent with you. I'm paying for everything tonight; I don't care if you leave me in debt after today. I need you to feel better by tomorrow!”

Christen knows how genuine Kelley's being, but laughed at her overflowing enthusiasm while wondering how she still had all this energy after a day of work, “You know, Kelley, you really don't have to.”

Kelley looked at her, appalled, “Yes I do.” She looked almost personally offended at the statement, “because you'll do the same for me.”

She has, and she will again, however many more times Kelley needs. Of course, she'd never once expected anything in return, only out of the love she has for Kelley and how much their friendship had meant to her, to the both of them. She'd joked to Kelley once in regret that she may never get to see the day when she would do the same for her, given how strong her relationship with Vero was going at that time. If only she could see how they would end up today.

“Fine, just take me to the bar.”

“Ok,” Kelley relented, pushing her into her room and closing the door, “a little boring, but perfectly in-character. I'll take that.”

Christen puts almost no thoughts into what to wear, brain still occupied about what happened last night. She emerges from her room moments later, Kelley smiles at her choice of outfit. “Perfect. You look damn beautiful tonight.”

“Just tonight?” Christen smiles back teasingly.

“Especially tonight.” Kelley corrected herself, opening the front door for Christen and waited for her to walk out first. “You know, if at any point you decided you wanna change your mind or go somewhere different, I'm your gal for tonight.”

“I know, Kel.” Christen laughs as she slams the car door shut, “Gosh, you’re really starting to radiate that mom energy, you know that?”

“I feel so overprotective of you, you know. Who else is gonna take care of you?” Kelley asks, eyes glued to the dimly lit road, nevertheless Christen could see the genuine concern oozing off her profile.

“I can take care of myself.”

“Please don't take insult in what I said. I just meant that we all need someone, Chris.”

“And I got you, Kelley. I'll always have you.”

“Damn right, you do!” Kelley whooped, and Christen snorted.

“But really though, I've been thinking, like, what if I just, like, die one day. Like, what if I just roll over and die next month or something because of an untreated fever that I thought was just me overworking myself during a workout. Who’s gonna take care of you then?”

Christen stares at her incredulously for a second, then she bursts out laughing, “You dramatic little bitch! I can't believe how little faith you have in me. Do you think I'm that lonely?”

“I don't! But I was just going over different scenarios in my head in case I'll have to leave you someday and- Christen, stop laughing! Can't a girl just be sentimental about her best friend for a second?”

The bar was moderately full by the time they got there and Kelley had finished parking. Kelley races to hold the door open for Christen, mouthing “no, after you” and a gesturing hand as she passes, still a giggling mess from their conversation in the car. She makes herself comfortable on a barstool and calls for two tequila shots.

“Wow. Right off the bat?” Kelley asked.

“What? I deserve it.”

“Just pace yourself a little, please.”

“I know what I'm about, Kel.”

They sit on several more shots of various liquor and a Cosmopolitan for Christen and a placeholder beer for Kelley just so her hands won't be too empty. They try to talk about life and work and everything in between, still, in between each shots, fragments of a thought of Vero would cross her mind in a manner akin to that of shooting stars, with visible traces that are all too difficult to ignore and disappears as soon as she blinks her eyes. And whenever she feels a slight burn in her nasal passages and a slight haze to her vision she downs another shot and ordered another one immediately. Out of the corner of her eyes she sees a familiar face, it takes her a second to remember the name of the woman but Christen's sure she wouldn't even need a beat if she was sober because the woman's got a face that's hard to forget. She's talking to a woman again. Christen isn't sure if it was the same woman she was kissing nights ago or a different one. 

“Hey, isn't that your friend Tobin?”

Kelley doesn't even look, “Probably is. She comes here so often she might as well live here.”

“Is she like... you know... an alcoholic?”

“No,” Kelley laughs, “she just really likes picking up women. I swear there is no way there’s enough gay women in this city for her to be taking a different one home every day from the same bar.”

“Hmm.” Christen hums and finishes her cocktail, finally feeling the slight buzz that she's been chasing. The back of her mind now contains a thought calculating her chances of getting picked up by Tobin if she comes here often enough.

Kelley is now on her third sparking water to flush the beer out of her system. She sounded obscenely overjoyed when she announced, “I'll be right back; gonna go pee this beer out.”

So now Christen's sitting all alone at a bar table made to seat two, looking so open and lonely, calling for just about anyone to slide up to the empty seat and try their luck. She tries to look like she hates it, glancing back at her phone every other second to look busy. But she sees that somebody's approaching her and looks up. It's Tobin.

“Hey.” Tobin greeted simply. She pulls out the chair and seats herself in one swift motion like it belonged to nobody, “You're Kelley's friend aren’t you?”

It's a bit weak of an introduction, Christen reasoned, not even a pickup line. Not what she was expecting at all, but she'll take it.

“Yes, and you're Tobin right?”

“I am.” Tobin fidgeted, “Um, listen, can I buy you a drink?”

“Actually, Kelley's paying for all of my drinks tonight, but thanks.” She holds back an offer for Tobin to buy her a drink another time.

“Oh. Did she lose a bet or something?”

“No. I just got out of a long-term relationship and she's just trying to cheer me up.”

“Oh... shit.” Tobin looks as if she'll have a nervous breakdown, “I am so, so, so sorry if I brought up anything upsetting.”

“It's fine, Tobin, I'm not as upset about it as I thought I would be.”

Tobin opens her mouth and it looks like she struggling to speak, a sound gets caught in the back of her throat and Christen wonders what could possibly make her so nervous. And then Tobin slides her a piece of paper before she speaks again, “Kelley told me she's gonna have a really busy month at work, so here's my number. You know, just in case you need someone to talk to. I'll listen to anything.”

Now that's the weirdest pickup strategy Christen has ever seen.

“This isn't- I'm- I'm not trying to pick you up or anything, at all.” Tobin clarifies too quickly for Christen to form a thought, “You just seemed like a really interesting person from what Kelley have told me and I just wanna be your friend, or even an acquaintance, if- if that's what you want.”

“You said you're a great listener?”

“I am.”

“Then I'll keep this in mind.” Christen takes the paper not too eagerly in action and shoves it in her pocket.

“I'll see you around then.” And with that Tobin's gone and everything felt like a fever dream until Kelley is back.

“So sorry, that line for the restroom was a riot.” Kelley slides back into her bar-height chair and stands back up immediately, “Hey, why's my chair still so warm-”

“Do you wanna buy some cheap vodka and get drunk at a bowling alley?”

Kelley forgets the chair and perks up instantly, “Yes! Now, you’re talking!”

Sneaking half-pint bottles of vodka into the bowling alley was as easy a challenge as it was five years ago when they used to do it on a daily basis as bored college students. And bowling's still the same: Kelley's terrible as she's always been and Christen's still mediocre but looks like a professional compared to the former. The greasy fried food they decided to indulge still tastes stale even for a dodgy alley fast food. Things get even more unintelligible when they both finally got drunk and had to be kicked out by 1 a.m., Kelley's car is forgotten in the alley's tiny parking lot as they decided to walk their way home. Christen forgets to drink a glass of water for her hangover and set her alarm for work tomorrow, but she does remember to take out the paper from her pocket before throwing her jeans in the washer. It sits idle on her bedside table for a week before Christen finds the courage to touch it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn’t proofread this :D and i knOw im all over the place with the past tense/present tense and if its that distracting and you yell at me in the comments i *might* change it


	2. philia

Christen thinks Tobin sounded a bit too overconfident when she claimed that she was a good listener. 

It's a difficult task, to be a competent listener, one that required significant empathy and timing (which often goes understated, but knowing when to chime in with comments and when to shut the fuck up makes or breaks you as a listener). Being a good listener means being a smart speaker, because in those comments that you already need to perfectly time, you need to somehow concisely and strategically word them in a way that doesn't further break down the presumably emotional person ranting to you, supposed to validate their feelings without inflating their ego too much. It's a whole lot to perfect, therefore she just wanted to prove Tobin wrong.

This wasn't her original plan whenever she spends the night alone while Kelley's gone out of town for her job. She was supposed to have everything she needs to be comfortable here in her apartment. Her plan was perfect: a rewatch of Glee while eating delivered pizza and ice cream in her favorite baggy hoodie, and then the orgasm of her trusty vibrator will be the cherry on top that puts her to sleep without her prescribed sleeping pills. But then in a domino effect, things started to go wrong: her ice cream is rendered inedible from severe freezer burn, the bottle of red wine atop their fridge had oxidized to vinegar from being left out for too long, her pack of cigarettes that she rarely turns to but does so in desperate times is empty. And thoughts of Vero suddenly intrudes her head, the guilt that she'd tried to suppress about how everything went down finds a way to float to the surface. The weight of it all makes her fidgety, so she picks and chews at the skin around her nails, trying to steer her attention to the teen musical on the screen. She winces when she accidentally bites too deep and the familiar taste of blood fills her mouth. Defeated, she goes to her room and grabs a new, equally baggy hoodie draped over the back of her desk chair that does not have “**I ❤️ My Police Officer Boyfriend**“ written on it in bright, bold letters. (Kelley had gotten it for her from a thrift store as a joke, nevertheless, it was absurdly and frustratingly comfortable. Christen slaps her hard in the arm every time Kelley snickers at her whenever she sports the hoodie around the house.) She reaches for her wallet, too, and freezes as she sees the slip of paper held directly underneath the wallet. She holds it contemplatively in her hand, then slips it in her pocket and rushes out.

The liquor store is a mere two blocks away from her house. Christen considers taking her bike, but decides against it as she thinks about chugging the alcohol as soon as she steps out the store. She strolls there with her hood up and hands in her pockets, occasionally brushing her finger through the pocket knife she's taken with her, hoping to not pass as a woman taking a walk without a companion through the city at night. Thankfully, the rowdiness specific to a bigger city doesn't seem to ever wane even at night, as she could easily find groups of pedestrians to walk alongside and simply hop onto a different group as the directions of their destination changed. At the store, she picks up a bottle of Absolut Vodka and Tito's Handmade, weighing the two choices in her hands and contemplates the $5 difference. She tries to ask the opinion of the clerk who, of course, suggests that she takes the more expensive bottle. In the end, she chooses the cheaper Tito's Handmade and asks for two packs of Marlboro Reds at the counter. She pays with a $50 bill and accidentally fished out the piece of paper when she pulled out her wallet. She finds a bit of humor in how many times she'd crossed path with it yet never considered the obvious choice to call. Quickly forgetting her original plan to twist open the bottle and immediately start chugging after purchase, she instead sits on the sill of the store front window underneath the crooked neon “OPEN” sign to paste the number onto her phone keypad and hit “call”.

Tobin picks up just before it goes to voicemail and Christen begins to consider deleting the number off her phone. Tobin answers her with a “hello?” of skepticism like she wasn’t sure if she was speaking to a real person or an advertising bot.

“Hey, Tobin? It's Christen.” She says, then swiftly adds, “From the bar.”

Tobin laughs in both disbelief and relief, “Oh my god, you called! I wasn’t sure if I've freaked you out in my approach and made you toss the paper.”

Christen makes a note of how different Tobin's voice is without the need to raise her voice over the bar's loud live music. She speaks with a sense of casualty and permanent mischief, like she's never in a hurry because she's got all the time in the world to spare and a pass to pull all the pranks she wants and never get snitched on. 

“Listen, are you still up on that offer for me to vent whatever's on my mind?”

“Always!”

“Great! And um...” Christen hesitates, “is it coming off too strong if I ask to come over to your place? It's not- don't take it the wrong way, Kelley's out of town right now and I just think it'd be better to talk face to face.”

“Not at all. Any best friends of Kelley is my friend! I'll text you the address.”

“Ok! I'll bring a drink for bothering you at this hour.”

“Christen, you don’t have to. This isn’t me doing you a favor at all.”

“No, no, I want to. And plus I just left the liquor store, so...”

“Gotcha.” Tobin laughs, “I'm gonna hang up now so I can text you the address.”

Christen chuckles to no one in particular as soon as the line went dead, wondering if Tobin is this trusting with everyone and if she had any fear at all about letting a stranger (unless Tobin considers a thirty-second conversation enough to make them friends, which doesn’t seem too out of character if she'll be honest) into her house at night. Her phone's flash went off when the text finally sends.

As it turns out Tobin lives a five minutes from the store and a fifteen minute walk from her house. Christen speed-walks over with the content from the liquor store hidden in a brown paper bag. She reaches a house that she considers moderately big for one person in almost no time and rings the doorbell. Tobin swings the door with a smile that reaches ear to ear. She welcomes her in with the enthusiasm that matches a sports announcer and explains that she lives with two other housemates but assures that they're both out on a date currently.

Tobin leads her to the couch, her bunny slippers slapping against the floor with every step, only stopping to grab two glasses as per Christen's request. When they both meet the couch, Christen presented to her the bottle and took a first big sip to Tobin's impressed stare. Christen just shrugs, and assures that she'll stop herself before getting too delirious. Tobin surprises her when she twists the lid open to pour and take an equally impressive sip. They trade words of exposition until Tobin's created an air of familiarity enough to ease her into talking. She doesn't tell her the bulk of what happened with Vero; she figured they were barely above strangers at this point to be sharing that much already. It was easier to talk about things that Kelley had heard her talk about countless times before, things she'd needed a different opinion on. Christen doesn’t remember the last time she had been so open to anyone. She had barely given herself any room to breathe and think with the rate she was speaking. She felt herself getting lighter with each word spoken, like a load was being taken off her back the more she spoke. She had talked about all the events that involved Veró or was shaped by Veró, while never actually mentioning her. Christen danced around the topic of Veró so precariously that they would have fallen straight into the pit of it had they taken one misstep.

“What do you do?” Christen asks, realizing that she's been going on and on about how much she disliked her job while Tobin hasn’t even said a hint of what she does for a living.

“I coach the local youth soccer team and do whatever odd jobs I can find during offseasons.”

“You play soccer?” Christen asks, her eyes widened. 

“Yeah, I did.” Tobin smiles fondly, a look of pride flashes across her face, “Do you play, too?”

Reminded with memories of the proudest moments of her life, Christen beams at Tobin an equally wide smile, “I played during college. And I was pretty good, if I must say so myself.”

“Where did you play?”

“Stanford, a striker for three years.”

“Wait,” Tobin freezes with a look on her face that shows she was trying to put something together, “Press?”

“My last name?”

“Oh my god!” Tobin exclaims, “I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it— you're Christen Press!”

“Dude,” she continues, even more exhilarated, “you were, like, a college soccer legend. People from my college team wouldn’t shut up about you after we played Stanford.”

Christen blushes, “I wouldn’t say that I'm that prolific.”

Tobin cuts her short, “Stop it, you’re being modest right now, which is ridiculous given how good you were. My teammates were even talking about the possibility of you going pro like it was a done deal.” She spins the transparent glass in her hand, mixing in the vodka with the top layer of melted ice, “So, why aren’t you playing with the NWSL right now?”

Christen shifts uncomfortably, it’s been years since she’d ever paid a thought to soccer. Walking away hurt too much, and now that she's confronted with it again it still felt nothing short of the day she'd thrown away her boots. She could tell Tobin the truth, since she'd already divulged half of her life events to Tobin and her ridiculous listening skills, but she isn’t sure if she was willing to embarrass herself further by bursting into tears as she thought about how much she misses the sport. 

“Things happened, I guess. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

Not wanting to further drag down the mood, she swallows a swift shot and quickly changes the subject, “You said you've played in college too?”

“I did, for UNC.” Tobin smirks in good-natured complacence, “I don’t mean to brag, but I was told I was one of the better midfielders they've ever had. Then after graduation I went pro for a season until this-“ she slaps the leg with the visible limp, “minor inconvenience happened.”

“What happened, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Good ol' car accident.” Tobin said with a shrug as if she was simply informing someone of the weather. “A drunk driver was speeding like crazy right behind me, crashed into me, and pushed me right into the car in front. My right leg was crushed by the time the medics pulled me out.”

Christen looked on sympathetically, “I'm so sorry, Tobin.”

“Don’t be. I've sued the son of a bitch for everything he’s got and had plenty of time to wallow but I can walk now, can't I?”

Christen admires the positivity radiating from Tobin and wondered about the people she surrounds herself with who probably influenced her current nonchalance to such a traumatic event. But then she thinks back to Kelley and— well— Veró, the only two people she had when she made her decision to quit. They were both good to her, comforted her when she starts to regret her decision every other night and listened to her cries and steered her away from bad coping mechanisms. Maybe she could’ve been like Tobin, being able to openly talk about letting go of the only thing she'd ever been passionate about and its following years, but instead she'd shut herself out from ever thinking about the sport again and shoved everything related to it in a closet in the corner of her apartment. But, still, they were one and the same, even if Christen had fallen down a dark, dark pit while Tobin thrives in the sun, and Christen gives her an understanding nod and sipped from her drink. 

Christen takes much longer to get the buzz going and was surprised to see that Tobin had already started to slur her words while Christen is still trying to make the room spin a little. They were a third finished with the bottle when Christen really notices the woman in front of her. It was as if the alcohol acted as a new spectacle for her eyes, enhancing every detail she once was dumb enough to once disregard. Mesmerizing, the uniform way Tobin's hair would fall whenever she ran her hand through it. She could hardly take her eyes off it and now that she's a little more than tipsy she'd be lying if she said she had any self control left in her body to not run her hand through it. So she reaches out a hand and brushes the smooth, slightly damp hair to the side, and Tobin is looking at her with a kind of spark in her eyes that seemed to be of challenging mischief, taunting her to make a move that she already knew Christen was going to.

“You’re fucking beautiful.” With a hand cupping Tobin's jaw, a whisper slips from Christen's mouth that wasn't something she had meant to say out loud, just an observation for herself to sit in and reflect upon. But Tobin's heard her very clearly and is now grinning. It's so damn complacent and it's so annoyingly pretty that Christen just can’t help but kiss it clean off her face.

So that's how Christen ends up at Tobin's apartment late on a work-night. She didn’t intend for them to end up like this: with her fingers through Tobin's newly washed hair and a tongue in her mouth. In fact, she didn’t intend to come to Tobin's place at all. What she had wanted to do when she precariously slid on her jeans and carelessly throw on a big hoodie to hide the fact that she couldn’t care less for a bra was to take a short trip to the liquor store for a fifth of vodka and maybe even a pack of cigarettes. But half way through the walk all she could think about was Tobin's last words to her when they last saw each other a week ago.

It feels like flames batting at each other the moment their tongues touch. Christen is taken aback by the vigor of the kiss, how much they both seemed to want it. It kind of scared her, how little they knew about each other still, and how familiar Tobin's lips feel against hers. And with that realization, she swiftly pushes Tobin off her with a hand on her chest.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen.” She apologizes and clears her throat, looking anywhere but at Tobin. When her eyes finally finds her face, Tobin is blushing, hard. 

“No, that was all on me. I'm so sorry. You’re- you’re just— my god, you’re really the prettiest woman I've ever seen.”

_God, Tobin. Not now!_ Christen almost groans. 

“I'm gonna go now,” Christen says, standing up and puts the half-full bottle back in the paper bag. The heat of the kiss came with a sudden reminder that she's braless on her with the helplessness she feels under Tobin's eyes, the nakedness of it all. She's red as she tugs at the hoodie a little and thanks the lord that it's huge on her. 

“You're not driving, are you?”

“No, I walked here, it's just a fifteen minute walk.”

“What?” Tobin cried, “You are not doing that!”

“It's fine, Tobin, I’ve done it plenty.”

“Not on my watch you’re not. Let me pay for your Uber.”

“Tobin, I'm not letting you spend money on me after I've just wasted your night with my personal shenanigans that doesn’t even have to do with you.”

“Fine. How about...” Tobin ponders for a moment, “is your phone charged.”

“Yes.” She hardly ever leaves her house without her phone fully charged.

“Call me on speaker, and stay on that call with me until you're inside. If you don't feel safe, start talking to me and I'll say something like ‘I'll catch up to you in a minute’. But if you want me to shut up, I will, and if I hear anything off I'll alert someone immediately.”

“Gosh, Tobin. I- I don't know. That's just so much to ask of you.”

“But you’re not asking, are you, because I'm offering- no, I'm telling you.” And she gives her an easy smile. It's charming in the worst of ways, but then she continues, “But also, do you want me to act like I have a gun if you do decide to talk-”

“Goodnight, Tobin.”

The walk was simple enough, a bit uneventful if not for the smile on her face as she listened to Tobin's breathing. Tobin keeps her words and stayed mum the entire time. Christen could hear her quiet breathing if she listened closely enough, it started to get even as soon as she reaches her door handle.

“Hey, Tobin?” She called out softly, “I'm home.”

There's a sound of Tobin stirring in her wake, afterwards she finally replies, “Great! See, that wasn't such a hassle was it?”

“I guess not." Christen senses a wish of goodnight on her tongue and decides to finally call it a night so Tobin can get some real sleep, but- "Do you wanna hang out again? Just like this— or not— but not when we're both inebriated?"

“Totally!” Tobin agrees, her voice wavers as if sudden movements were involved and Christen wondered if it was because she was nodding fervently as she answers. The imagery of a sleepy Tobin nodding vehemently makes her giggle.

"Goodnight, Tobin."

"I'd wish you a goodnight, too, but you'd have to promise you won't disappear on me for a whole week before I can see you again."

Christen rolls her eyes, but her smile has been the brightest it's been since weeks before the breakup.

"I promise I'll give you a text by next week— or tomorrow, who knows. But given how much I've enjoyed talking to you tonight this seems a bit redundant."

"That's all I've wanted to hear. Sweet dreams, Chris."

When the call ends, Christen smiles. She had ended the night content when it seemed impossible to revive just hours before. She could go to sleep right now, take one of her sleeping pills or just sleep on the rush of the memories and then do the same every single night until it wears out so she doesn't have to deal with the pain she created. But somewhere between the alcohol and Tobin she had realized the unfinished matter she needed to deal with. Nervousness finds her again as her fingers shake at the contact with the name on her screen. The first call went unanswered, nonetheless, Christen knew Vero wouldn't be out this late on a weeknight. She calls again, and Vero picks up after four rounds of ringing.

“What do you want?”

Christen had expected her to sound livid, confused, bitter —not that she would be in any place to blame her— but the woman had sounded forlorn, supplicating her for an answer as if she was already on her knees begging.

"Please. Please, Christen, just help me out. What do you want?" Her words are slurred. Christen couldn't help but feel concerned for a woman who's never been a big drinker.

"I wanted to apologize."

"Do you even know what you're apologizing for?”

"I- I don't know, Vero. I'm full of guilt because things shouldn't end the way it did, but it needed to and I lo- I am so sorry, Veró.”

From the other end, Vero scoffed, “You are so cruel, you know that? You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for. And I have no idea how to stop loving you, isn’t that terrible?”

Christen knows Vero had tried to move away from her phone so the sounds of her cries wouldn't be obvious, but the microphone picks up the ghosts of them anyway. She had no idea what to say.

“Everybody wants a piece of you, you know? I've seen it since the beginning of us; they all want you. But isn’t it sad that they'll never need you? Not in the way I needed you. Sure, all their needs for you will be carnal, but I needed the way you made me feel loved. And I know you loved the way I needed you. That's why you dragged it on its last leg and got it to this point isn't it?”

It's just something heartbroken people say. When one is so hurt they'll say just about anything to lessen the pain. She doesn’t have to hang onto every words like a self-prophecy, but she does, and they hurt her anyway. Vero hangs up when she realizes that Christen was left with nothing to reply with. Christen listens to the radio silence with her head hanging low.

She doesn't sleep that night. Doesn't even try to, even when the half empty child-proof bottle of sleeping pills calls out at her like it does every other night in the past week or so. She lets a few tears fall and soak up a small spot in her pillow, but chastises herself because who was she to be upset when she breaks hearts for her own selfish needs and doesn’t even know what to apologize for? For a moment, her mind briefly goes to Tobin and wonders if the other girl knew about breaking a heart or two, and if she ever felt the guilt as it crushes on her lungs until she can’t breathe out an apology even if she wanted to. Then she scoffs at the ridiculousness, because of course Tobin has broken hearts, and thinks about what it would be like to have been close enough to Tobin to be hurt by her ever changing interests. She doesn’t know if she'd mind being hurt by Tobin.


	3. vulnicura

It's been a slow past few days at work, which Christen would usually welcome with two arms wide open and a running tackle, but given her rather dramatic current circumstances, the less time spent crunching numbers meant the more time she has to sit with the memories she has been trying to avoid. She tries to draw out her work: typing slower, purposefully breaking her pencil so she can sharpen it more frequently, even asking the new intern to take a break and let her do the coffee run instead. None of it was enough to keep her from gnawing at her cuticles in a fit of nervousness, however. She couldn’t even stop when the skin surrounding her poor fingernails split open and the crevices where her skin and nails meet begin to line with blood.

She couldn’t remember the last time her nails and cuticles had seen brighter days. Life with her father hasn’t been very forgiving. She spent her childhood as a rather nervous child. Most of her nervous ticks as a child carried their ways into adulthood: the picking and biting of her nails, chewing on the chapped skin of her lip, the painfully noticeable knee bouncing, and— well— the panic attacks.

After finishing her lunch in fifteen minutes, she steps outside the office and lights a cigarette.

_Oh yeah, she does that a lot now._

She waves a greeting to a coworker, a much heavier smoker and an older gentleman whose name she could not remember despite having been coworkers since she got her job there several years ago, to her defense they had only started interacting after she picked up taking smoke breaks. She asks about his grandchildren every single time in hopes he doesn’t notice how impersonal she is with him. She wonders how long she can open with “Hey, you!” or “What's going on, buddy!” before he starts noticing. In her current state of perpetual boredom she might as well make a game out of it.

When the clock strikes 4 p.m. Christen exhales a little too loudly and drew the attention of some nearby cubicles. After profusely apologizing, she collects her belongings and stepped outside for another cigarette before stepping on the gas pedal.

“Hi, Kel.” She groans as the door shuts behind her, wanting to collapse on the living room couch instantly.

“Hey, you.” Kelley bubbly rises from the recliner and bounces towards Christen for a hug before she could push her away. Kelley halted mid-hug, looking repulsed, “Why do you reek of cigarettes?”

Christen sighs in faux-misery, “Alright, you got me! I'm having an affair with a heavy smoker.” She starts to lose it, “sorry to have you find out this way, I was planning on telling you tomorrow.” Christen bursts into giggles all at once as Kelley watches unamused.

“Hilarious, Press. I, too, find it amusing that you’re cramming every single bad coping mechanism known to mankind into a week.”

Christen laughs her off, “Kel, relax, I was giving my coworker a ride home and the asshole smoked all over my car. Believe me, I wouldn’t have given him a ride if I knew.”

Kelley doesn’t look at all sold, but she rolls her eyes and moves on in a way Christen knows she'll mention it again in a few days, “Whatever. Today is your turn to cook dinner, by the way.”

“Fuck, is it? Well, Kel, I hope you’re in the mood for adult peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

“What makes it ‘adult’?”

“The bread is toasted,” Christen snickers.

“I'm gonna kill you.” Kelley threatens.

“You can’t afford the rent alone!” Christen waves her off as she stepped into the kitchen, trying to remember where they kept the bread.

Kelley steps behind her before she could begin to take out the peanut butter, “Tell you what, Chris, how about I make us dinner today and you cook the next two days?”

Christen drops her hands to the side and sighs in relief, “That’s actually brilliant, Kel. Plus, I've got something to do right now, anyway.”

Kelley looks at her quizzically, she just shoos her away with a flick of the wrist.

Standing adjacent to the closet where they kept most of the forgotten miscellaneous stuff, Christen paces around in her spot for a beat. When she does open it, she pulls out a hefty cardboard box from the bottom rack that rattles of genuine metal and plastic with each tuck. One by one, she takes out the many championship trophies and medals with shaky hands, relieved to find none of them had rusted despite being abandoned for so long. She cleans off the caked on layers of dust gingerly with a towel she brought with her.

She hears footsteps behind her, so she says distractedly without looking back, “Did you know that Tobin used to play in college as well?”

Kelley sounds surprised when she answers, “Yeah, she did. Then she was with the Portland Thorns for, like, a season before the leg thing happened. How did you know this?”

“Oh, we... talked.”

“Talked?”

“Why do you sound so surprised? You were out of town that night and I had nobody else to talk to.”

“Again, I must ask, did you guys _just_ talk?”

“Yes!” Christen exclaimed incredulously, “I know Tobin has that thing going on with women but she’s not terrible. You’re her friend, too!”

“Okay, I know I sounded terrible, but I really didn’t know Tobin had that side in her.”

“Well maybe you just don’t know her well enough,” Christen retorted.

“Oh, like you know her so well after, what, one conversation, huh?” Kelley kneels down to where Christen has plopped herself and put her in a loose headlock. Christen fights back by reaching back and ruffling her already messy hair. 

They wrestle on the ground and continued to do so when Christen yells, “Kelley, let go of me! Don’t you have a meal to cook?”

“Pasta's boiling right now, bitch. Not until you apologize.”

Christen doesn’t budge. Kelley switches gear to jabbing her in the ribs. 

“I'm sorry! Please let go of me.” Christen begs amidst giggles while she attempts to put Kelley into a chokehold. “God, I shouldn’t have let you share a gym membership with me if I knew you were gonna get this buff.”

Kelley brushes herself off as she stands, only before she pulls at her sleeve to reveal a flexed bicep, “Hell yeah. I'm ripped, superstar.” She kisses the (admittedly) defined mass of pure muscles much to Christen's repulsed face. 

A kitchen alarm promptly screams and Kelley walks off to tend it the meal. Deciding to not stand up, Christen lies back down on her back with one hand supporting her head and sighs, looking at the half-cleaned awards by her feet.

“Do you miss it?” Kelley calls out from the kitchen.

“Miss it? I've never stopped thinking about it for more than a day,” she admits, “I don't know if I've ever loved anything this much. Too bad it couldn’t be my saving grace.”

“For what it’s worth, you were beautiful at it, Chris.” Kelley says, the sounds of running water hitting a pot accompanying her, “There will never be another like you. Not at Stanford, not at any D-1 leagues. You might not think so but nothing can take that away from you.”

“But I took it away from me.”

“But,” Kelley reasons, emerging from the kitchen with two dishes in her hands, “You were fucking miserable then, Chris.”

“I was.” She simply admits.

She sets the dishes across from one another on their narrow four-person dining table and walks over to where Christen still lies on her back. She crouches down and caresses her cheek tenderly, brushing aside loose strands of hair, “Let's go eat, Chris.”

❧❧❧

Every single morning, Christen follows this same routine: she wakes up at 5 a.m. sharp, spends 15 minutes doing whatever she needs to in the bathroom, dress up in her workout gear and goes on a run, after which she'll shower at home and head to work with a light breakfast to eat in the car. A lot of these she can half-ass or do without; she can close her eyes for another 10 minutes or so after the alarm went off, sometimes spend less time in the bathroom if she’s in a rush, hell, she'll even skip breakfast if she's in such a pinch. But never will she skip or half-ass the morning run.

Not many things in life made much sense to Christen. Why couldn’t she have picked a more interesting career after her pro-athlete plans fell through? Why couldn’t she keep her anxiety under control and let it dictate her decision to give up her only passion? Why couldn’t her father just give her a god damn apology for dumping a lifetime of mental-torture onto her at a young age? As an adolescent she'd tried out different solutions of making sense of it all, from distractions through school work to spending more time with friends instead of going back home. But she started to run when the high of recess races with her elementary school friends wore off throughout the years. When she spends the extra hour after soccer practice on the track sprinting more laps, something started to make sense. The bounce of the rubber track surface as she fire through exhilarates her body, and the reddened soles of her shoes reminds her of how long she could stay on that track before being forced to leave. And when she gave up her soccer contract, running became the only thing that makes sense.

Throughout her runs around the entire neighborhood, there was a lot she'd had to learn about the people who lived around her. She knows a little girl who lives a 20 minute sprint from Christen's house that she sees peering out the window whenever Christen passes by, until one day the girl stops her in her path to hand Christen a glass of water; it's since then became a daily routine of the girl to do so, so Christen starts carrying sweets in her jogger's pockets. There's also an older, retired gentleman who walks his Shiba-Inu on the same path Christen takes and every single day when they do cross paths, she takes a treat from her other pocket and feeds the dog in exchange for kisses and tricks. There's, inexplicably, a small graveyard nearby that she also crosses on her runs, and it's there that she sees an elderly man who daily places fresh flowers on the graves that nobody visits anymore. Kelley joins her on the run more often than not, but always stays several yards behind as she's unable to keep up with Christen's sprints, and sometimes Christen would take a detour to cry against a tree because just the act of sprinting takes her back to the magic she would create on the field when she was younger and unafraid. Playing soccer had taken whatever amount of self-esteem she had left and sucked her money dry, but still, she'd compromised to keep a piece of it with her, a form of meditation for her.

It was Friday, still uneventful as is the rest of the week. Christen is halfway done with her cigarette after finishing her lunch in record time when her phone buzzes. Inquisitively, she tends to it immediately fearing the worst, as Kelley never texts during work and they had differing lunch breaks. It was both the person and the content of the message that catches her even further off guard. Tobin, the person she had drunk-made-out with on their first formal meeting, had sent her a text that read: “**do u wanna grab lunch tomorrow? at 12? i know this place that makes really good omelettes**”and then another text briefly after: “**oh wait r u at work right now?? oops**”

It makes her laugh a little. Her fingers quickly forming a reply: “**It's ok, I'm currently on my lunch break. You should know that your lack of punctuation and literally any respect for grammar and spelling physically hurts me.**”

Tobin replies in less than a minute: “**oh no :( how are you gonna survive :((( but whats the answer, girly**”

Christen notes how she texts the exact same way Kelley does, but at least Kelley had the decency to end her thoughts properly with a period. She weighs out her options and chances of Tobin bringing up the scandalous part of that night, and then she wonders since when had she become such a pussy.

“**Sure, text me the address?**”

Tobin's reply was so in character Christen could practically read it in her voice, “**no need, i'll pick you up! save the planet yo**”

The mental image of Tobin waving the shaka hand signal as she types up the texts causes Christen to laugh out a snort. Even as the phone rests in her pocket, her grin remains as if her muscles would ache if she'd tried to stop it. She crushes the remains of the cigarette under her foot just as her coworker steps outside for his fix. He waves at her, and she waves back with more enthusiasm than any other day.

❧❧❧

“Christen!” Kelley storms into her room, a wooden spoon in hand, without bothering to knock just as Christen finishes putting on her bra, “Why the fuck is Tobin's car parked right outside our apartment?”

“Shit.” Christen mumbles under her breath, shoving back the three different shirts she had in her hands and opted to hastily pick out a slightly cropped tee that matches with her jeans, “She's early.”

“She didn’t tell me shit about coming over and now I'll have to ask her to stay for lunch and we don’t have enough food for three people!”

“Kel, relax, she's taking me to lunch.” She pulls her look together with a light lipstick and eyeliner, unfazed by Kelley.

“And you couldn't tell me that before I made lunch for both of us?” Kelley exasperated. Christen caps her lipstick and gives her a quick kiss on the cheek before pushing past. “More dinner for the both of us, Kel. Don't fret. And don't forget to clean the bathroom today!”

——

“How far is this diner?” Christen asks as Tobin pulls out of her parking spot. The car is humbly an older Honda Accord model with a fairly clean interior and faint peppermint smell, albeit with visible cracks on the dashboard. Blues rock faintly plays through the car's stereo.

“Not, like, that far. Fifteen minute, max?” Tobin whistles to an ear-candy of a guitar riff, and then she asks, “How was work?”

“Awful.” Christen groans, “We've had a slow week and my boss keeps walking behind me so I can’t even go on my phone.”

Tobin laughs, “Lucky you. I just got a job at a warehouse because— you know— off-season and all that, right on their busiest week of the whole month. In the loading section, too!”

Christen reasons, her eyes absentmindedly darts to the driver's arm, the well defined muscles not hidden very well under the thin white short sleeve, “I'd take that over eight hours of sitting on my ass in a ‘cushioned’ chair that feels like folded cardboard to stare at a computer screen. God, do I need the workout.”

“Sure you can handle all those boxes?” Tobin says in jest.

“Fuck off, I'm still very much in shape.” Christen fires back in equal amounts of playful offense.

“Oh, we have to test that out then, don't we.” Tobin's lips curls into a knowing smirk, “Wanna go to a pick-up game with me?”

Christen shoots her down almost immediately, “Oh... I don't know about that, I haven’t played a single game ever since I quit, and that was years ago.”

“Why'd you quit, anyway? I don’t think I remember your answer the last time I asked.”

Christen blushes, mentally preparing for Tobin to bring up the kiss, but the latter never went that far. “I didn’t love it anymore, I guess.”

Tobin nods, “That's fair.” She didn’t say anything else afterwards, Christen reckons it’s because she doesn’t understand the notion of being out of love with soccer.

Just as Tobin promises, the diner lies less than 15 minutes from Christen's apartment. It's a rustic place with wooden foldable chairs and tables and cafeteria-style tables with built in benches made to seat four. There are hang lights coming from the ceiling which seems to be the main sources of brightness, its dimness gives the place a much more personable feel. It's too hipster to seem like a place with reasonable prices but the wobbling chairs gives her hope of the opposite. They sat down on one of the cafeteria tables and quickly ordered what Tobin's been preaching about since the text, Christen ordered an extra black coffee and pecan pie for them to share.

“I gotta be honest, Tobin.” Christen starts. Tobin looks up from her plate optimistically. “This omelette is more cheese and filling than there is egg.”

“That's what makes it so good!” Tobin argues, “If I wanted an omelette that's just eggs why would I go out to a diner when I can just make it at home?”

“I mean, fair point, but this is _too_ much.”

Tobin fakes a gasp of offense, clutching at her chest, she exclaimed, “How could you _possibly_ say that?”

Christen rolls her eyes and takes another sip of her coffee, smiling contently at the contrast of the bare-bone bitterness and the over-the-top richness of the omelette. “If it makes you happier, this pecan pie is transcendent. I think I could eat this every morning.” She points to the half-eaten pie with her fork.

“I knew it!” Tobin throws up her fists and beamed the brightest smile Christen had seen on her yet, “I wasn’t gonna let you leave this place without liking something.” Christen laughs at the childishness but also feels her cheeks flush. She hadn’t known the reason why. 

“Did this place pay you to bring customers to them? Is that why you were being so charming, so you can lure me into coming with you?” Christen asks, smiling as Tobin's cheeks also flush red as a reply.

“Nah,” Tobin finally musters, scratching the back of her neck as she tries to gain composure, “I took us here because they give me free meals for my time in NWSL, I think I was their favorite player or something like that.”

“Oh, so you were that good, huh?” Christen teases, preparing her belongings so they can leave.

Tobin tries to shrug the attention off of her as she drops a huge tip on the table that could easily compensate for both their meals and then some, “yeah, I guess. But not as good as you.”

“Stop that!” Christen laughs, pulling the door open for Tobin and walking out after her. 

“Stop what? You have to accept facts, Christen.” 

Their footsteps join one another on the sidewalk as they swept past the busy street of a Saturday. Christen tries to keep a distance, but tourists in large groups were ruthless, pushing their way through everything to get to an attraction. She feels their arms touching until Tobin links it around hers and shoves a hand into her pocket. “Don't you lose me now.” She says, barely above a whisper as if she was afraid of Christen hearing it.

“You loved soccer, didn’t you?” Tobin asks, finally, sounding relief as she says it as though she was letting go of a breath that she'd been holding in way past her lung's capacity.

Christen hadn’t known what to say for a long time.

“I loved the poetics of it.” She says, her gestures growing more and more frequent as she spews, “those grueling hours of practice, all the blood and the anger. It's- it's like we knew nothing but fire. Isn’t there something poetic in our suffering to be what we were, to create what we did on the field?”

“Do you think that anger is poetic?”

“Not really, but suffering to achieve something great is.” She continues, “there's poetry in it, and then there's tragedy in the game. And- and I... I haven’t figured out how to love the tragedy of it yet.”

Tobin doesn’t say anything. Christen wonders if it’s because she didn’t know the right words to respond or if she’s evaluating her response and had come to the conclusion that they’re all pretentious filler bullshit. She keeps looking at her, Christen notes, like she’s gathering the correct words to say, so she prepares to hear them.

“That answer you gave me as to why you quit,” Tobin says, “That’s bullshit.”

Christen was taken aback, “Excuse me?”

“You ‘didn’t love it anymore’?” Tobin air-quoted, “Bull-to-the-shit! You’re still clearly in love with the game and caught up in the poetics of it. You literally just sounded so passionate! Why did you really quit, Christen?”

“Why do you wanna know so bad?”

“Because you were so fucking great!” Tobin exclaims, her hands emphasizing her zeal in an ardent movement, “You could have been a star! I mean, you were practically a legend by the time you’re a junior, but now here you are crunching numbers at an office? I'll be haunted by the morning if you don’t tell me.”

Christen stops them in their tracks, Tobin looks to her hopefully. “I don't even know how to give you a condensed answer.” She exhales.

“Then don't. We have all day don't we?”

Christen leads them to a park bench and Tobin takes the cue, but instead of sitting on the seat, she decides to make herself comfortable sitting atop the bench's backrest with her feet on the seat. Christen sits as anyone else would.

“I was a really anxious kid. My parents were hard on me, my dad especially. He saw it fit that I act properly, never to complain and always to perform anything with everything I has. I think it was because he saw something great in me whenever I played. Although his approach to it was a little unconventional. He told me he sees me basking in all the national team glory someday, but it meant losing wasn’t an option. My high school's team wasn’t that good; we were underfunded to the fucking grave, I was the person who carried them to the playoffs but my dad didn’t see that as an excuse, he thinks it’s because I wasn’t good enough. We lost state champs to this empire of a private school and he didn’t let me hear the end of it. And then college came and that was even more fucking pressure. I mean, I wasn’t just representing some seedy high school anymore,” Tobin nods empathetically, “Stanford meant something, people knew its name. I couldn’t handle it, I was throwing up before every single game and was on three different antidepressants. My teammates had all gotten so used to my panic attacks that they don’t even bother checking on me during my breakdowns. At one point I just became so... disgusted with the game, I was so not myself. I shot like I was blind, it was all anger and no purpose. Kelley saw what it was doing to me and was the first person who told me to quit.”

Tobin suddenly looks somber, like somewhere between her long-winded explanation a switch was clicked. She looks as if in a loss of words, and Christen empathizes by letting her sit and marinate in her thoughts.

“Are you in a better place now?” was what Tobin finally said.

“I don't know.” Truth is that Christen hadn't ever thought of dealing with her decision to walk away head on. It was something she previously considered to be successfully buried, and now unearthing it gives her a strange feeling that she has yet experienced. “I haven’t told anyone in years, except for Kelley and Véro.”

“Why's that?”

Christen laughs, although her sentence came out humorless but her voice indicated none of such, “well, I've got no one else, Tobin.”

Tobin stands up all of a sudden and readjusts her already straight hat, “let me take you home now, yeah?” She offers, quick and obvious to change the subject. They walk back to Tobin's car in silence. She makes an effort to walk faster, the limp not slowing her down one bit. Tobin turns on the engine and let the air cool down to the desired temperature. She puts on another rock album different from the one they'd listened to on their way here, the volume was turned several notches higher.

Despite the blaring music, a fog of awkwardness circled the air, making them both shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Deciding she'd rather be comfortable, Christen takes the liberty to turn the music down significantly. Tobin jumps a bit.

“Did I make you uncomfortable back there?”

Tobin brings her hand to rub on her forehead, “no, I brought it upon myself. I— I really shouldn’t have pried. I had to walk away too— forced to walk away, against my own will. I knew how much it hurt me, and I was a piece of shit to force you to talk about it. I really shouldn’t have done that. I'm so sorry.”

Christen feels all her animosity towards the world melt away. In actuality, she hadn’t any problems talking about the gaping hole soccer had left in her heart; not as much as she'd expected to anyway.

“Oh, Tobin, you’re the sweetest thing in the world.” She coos, “I'm not mad at you, like, at all. I think I've had enough time to forget and live a normal life without it. Things happen, I don’t think I'd wanna live the rest of my life bitter about it.”

The hum of the air conditioner blows through the car, Tobin audibly exhales in relief, “It's just— I thought about this legacy I wanted to leave on this terrain of soccer back then, you know? I was so mad, so... obsessed with leaving a mark, being remembered. I wanted to be so much and then I was nothing. And I had all this fucking anger but nowhere to put the blame.”

“I thought you had it figured out.” Christen mumbles, looking down at her fidgeting fingers in guilt.

“I thought so, too. I'd met with people who've also walked away from soccer, whether it was to retirement of age or to build a family and it seemed like they've all got to compromise for something positive in return. They were all satisfied and they made me feel insane for not being happy so I pretended that I was. The people who retired had a fruitful career and the others had families. But I got nothing, I was robbed of it, and you were too. And I've never met anyone like you.”

Bitterness to come from Tobin was a new concept to Christen. And if she was honest, it hurts her too, seeing as she's taken Tobin as her new beacon of positivity. An interpretation of a new person destroyed, like a lighthouse that had crumbled. It seems Tobin doesn't anticipate that she would say anything; she cranks the volume back to where it was.

The ride ends in silence despite the music. Tobin doesn’t say anything else, she keeps her hands on the steering wheel and looks straight down, fidgeting with the gaps of it. Christen had wanted to stall a little in hopes of an _action_ from Tobin. But it is clear that Tobin would only say goodbye and nothing else, she steps out of the car. 

“Hey!” Tobin calls out before she could be out of earshot. Christen scurries back towards the car and leans into the rolled down window of the sedan, looking at Tobin with expectant eyes. Tobin suddenly looked shy.

“Can I kiss y-”

Christen didn’t give her the chance to finish, her hand a grip under Tobin's chin and she pulls her lips towards hers. They push and pull into the kiss until Tobin breaks away reluctantly for oxygen, and then shortly pulls in for another one, smiling into it.

____

She doesn’t deny the way Tobin is starting to make her feel; it all makes her feel too good to be denied. They've been talking even more frequently ever since the diner lunch and there’s something about Tobin that has her fascinated. Sweet, sweet Tobin, who blushes and gets coy a lot more often than Christen came to expect, who loves to slow dance with anybody nearby whenever a sultry ballad is played, who kisses random women at the bar like it’s just another task to get through the day. It's too bad Christen could never seem to find the courage needed to ask her out formally and Tobin has never brought up an inkling of a desire for a relationship. 

“**you wanna hit a nightclub with me and some other people on saturday night? i think kelleys coming too**” was what Tobin had texted her on an unassuming Tuesday night, late enough that she's already in her bed tucked under a layer of blanket but early enough so she isn’t already out cold. 

She thinks about the text for a moment, before yelling Kelley's name a little too loudly, who bursts through her door moments later wielding a bat.

“What? Is there something wrong?”

“Kel, there's no intruder. Are you going to a nightclub this saturday?”

Kelley lowers her bat and looks at her with knowing eyes, “Tobin told you, didn't she?”

“Well, are you?”

“Sure. What, do you wanna come with?”

Christen thinks for a beat, doesn’t want to answer too quickly as to not give Kelley any fulfillment. “Yeah, why the hell not.”

Kelley gives a smug laugh, “so after all these years, all it took for you to finally go out and socialize with people other than your coworkers is a surfer named Tobin?”

“Shut up.” Christen rolls her eyes but couldn’t stop a sudden rush of heat all the way behind her ears, she was thankful that her bedside lamp was too dim to be healthy for the eyes.

____

If she was being honest, Christen hadn’t always had the greatest experiences at nightclubs. The last time she went was with Véro in college, when the pressure of college soccer was at its peak. The constant flickering LED lights of the clubs hadn’t treated her kindly and she had a panic attack fifteen minutes after ordering her drink from the overwhelming pervasive brightness and eardrums-imploding music. But it might be different this time, because Kelley's here tonight and the latter had promised to not ever leave her side even if it’s to use the restroom (which, Christen did decline). The club also didn’t seem as crowded as it did last time, which perplexes her but damn if she doesn’t feel lucky. She looks around to realize that most of the people invited were ones she'd already known, friends of Kelley that she'd previously met on nights out with the latter. 

She feels a tap on her shoulder and finds Tobin as soon as she turns around, who gives her an enthusiastic hug before step back and shoving one hand inside her dark jean's pocket with a drink in the other.

“I'm so glad you could make it,” Tobin beams and Christen couldn’t help but do the same.

“I'm honestly just glad to see you,” Christen shouts over the music.

“Are you now?” Tobin laughs gleefully, “have you met the rest of the crew? They're all my friends.”

“Actually, I have. They're-“

“What?” Tobin shouts, and Christen realizes that she'd accidentally used an indoor voice.

“I've met all of them, they're friends of Kelley, too.” She shouts. 

“Oh, cool. You want anything to drink?” Tobin gestures to her empty hands.

“No, thank you. I think Kelley needs a driver home tonight.” Tobin looks over her shoulder to see Kelley dancing with two drinks in her hands, miraculously not spilling a single drop despite her grotesque movements while her girlfriend lowers her head in shame.

“I'm gonna migrate to somewhere not directly next to the speakers, wanna come with?”

Christen immediately turns to her right to come face to face with a pair of amplifiers playing dangerously loud club music. “Please.” She replies.

Tobin leads her to an emptier section of the dance floor where a few women who she recognizes as Emily, Julie, and Lindsey are chatting. They all greet them enthusiastically as if they'd known her forever and although Christen is slightly confused by the overt energy, she couldn’t help but pay them back with more energy than she would normally use. Tobin's forearm finds a way to her shoulder as her poor posture relaxes into her and it all feels natural like cutting teeth, so Christen just lets it happen. Even more so now that Christen realizes the eye contact the woman across the floor had been giving her— no, had been giving to the person right next to her; she lets their bodies merge even closer. She does end up buying a drink, eventually, still appreciative of the crew's enthusiasm but tired of their overlapping conversations, having to reluctantly push Tobin off to spend a minute at the bar for a Long Island. She sees Emily lean in closer to Tobin to say something, both their sets of eyes suddenly darting across the floor. She fears Emily's smirk and the rising suspicion of who they might be looking at. When she returns with the drink already a quarter way gone, the conversation had shifted into territories she wishes would never touch.

“Is _the_ Tobin Heath saying no to an opportunity to take a woman home?” Emily asks, a challenge raised in the tone of her voice.

“Watch me then,” Tobin replies, her voice low and different, suddenly not even acknowledging Christen's return. She walks up to the woman, who hasn’t broken eye contact the entire time. They trade very few words, and suddenly Tobin kisses the woman, hungry and complacent, still wearing a trademark smirk like she'd earned it trophy hunting. Their friends cheered and whooped boisterously from the side as they hurried out the bar with hands glued to one another. Christen watches over her shoulder from her place on the dance-floor and keeps on looking long after they both had left. Then she feels a tap on her shoulder and looks back to meet Lindsey's worried eyes, and before the blonde woman could ask anything, she excuses herself from the dance-floor in an incoherent apology to sit down somewhere far away from the chaos at the bar. She hides her glistening eyes behind the raised glass as the Long Island Iced Tea hits her tongue, hoping the tears wouldn’t fall when she blinks.

“Christen.” She heard someone call for her and immediately tried to wipe her eyes in a failure of an attempt at discretion. Kelley slides up next to her on a barstool. “You ok?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” She replied in faux confidence that she knew sounded too forced for anyone to fall for.

“You know, I was watching you the entire time that fiasco with Tobin and that girl was playing out. I swear the last time I saw you look _this_ upset was when you hit the post during that championship game at Stanford.”

Christen swallowed a little more of her Long Island in hopes of delaying a response. But alas, she couldn’t simply ignore the scrutinizing eyes of Kelley drilling into her head. “I'm jealous, I guess.” All those thoughts racing inside her head through millions of nerves and neurons and those three words were all she could blurt out. 

“You have the right to be.”

“But do I really? She's not mine and I'm nowhere near hers. We're nothing to each other.”

“You sure ‘bout that?” Kelley raised an eyebrow, speaking in a tone that implied she knows way more than Christen would like her to. “Have you asked her what your status is or are you just assuming here?”

Rolling her eyes, Christen admitted, “ok fine, I am making generalizations. But why on earth would I ask her that? We're not close enough to have that conversation.”

“Wait...” Kelley narrowed her eyes, confused. “Aren’t you two fucking?”

“What?” Christen yelped, “Where'd you get that from?” She sputtered, panicked and embarrassed.

“Sorry. You two just gave off that vibe.” Kelley replied, slightly embarrassed at the mistake.

“Aren't you gonna be a good friend and talk me out of my feelings for Tobin?”

Kelley shakes her head, “It's not my place to do that.” She said, “Tobin is a good person. She's a good friend and perhaps even a good person to love. But she's just a bit...” Kelley paused for a moment to find her footing with the correct words to say, “She's been hurt before, Chrissy, even if she exists to only hurt other women now. I just thought you needed to know that. I don’t think that she won’t change.”

Christen finishes the glass in one big gulp and buries her face in her hands, “I don't fucking know... god, I need to step out.”

Kelley doesn’t object, she just nods and says, “if you need anything, always call me. Good luck, Chris.”

____

Christen sneaks out the back door of the club, where the atmosphere is immediately quieter, she leans against the door and sighs, a lean that puts her entire weight on the door, that shows complete defeat and resignation. There’s not a wisp of a person near, but a gigantic dumpster and a little fluorescent light hanging above that could barely do its job correctly. Her hands dig inside her pocket then produces a pack of cigarettes, then a lighter. She starts the lighter once, twice, then three times, growing more desperate by the sparks. “Please, please, come on.” She begs, almost reduced to tears. Then, on the fifth strike, a flame dances on. She takes a long first drag of the cigarette then bursts into tears anyway.

She's about halfway done when—

“Don't do that.”

Christen almost drops her cigarette from her mouth in shock.

“What?”

“The cigarette. They make it harder to breathe or something.” Tobin says, walking in closer from the distance of an alleyway that leads to the parking lot. She steps just close enough to pull the stick from Christen's mouth, taking a single long drag herself. The burned end lights up, seemingly doing a better job to illuminate her pretty face than the light above. She stomps the cigarette clean on the concrete and blows out a lung full of smoke. Christen stares at her the entire time of disbelief and utter infatuation.

“That’s rude.”

“Don’t smoke.”

“Why— why the fuck are you here? Where's the woman you’re supposed to be fucking?”

Tobin looks taken aback, hurt follows her expression, “are you drunk?”

“No— maybe, but that’s not the question.”

“I wasn’t feeling it with her, there was just nothing there.”

“Like that’s ever been a problem with you.” Christen spats. She never means it.

“Did something happen?” Tobin starts to look distressed.

Christen's eyes soften, “I don't even know anymore, Tobin.” Despite her still-brewing anger, she is reduced to tenderness upon Tobin's concerns and finds unfairness in how Tobin could never do wrong when she's looking at her like that. Wordlessly, she brings a hand and cups Tobin's face, looking at her for permission, but Tobin's already leaning in. 

They kiss again, of course. Just as Christen sees the world tilt slightly and Tobin smirks against her mouth. And it's heated, of course. Just as Christen slips a tongue inside and Tobin slides her arms embracing her waist. It's a kiss to make Christen dizzy, choke-full of lust and passion and she had wanted it to burn her away and swallow her whole until she's nothing.

As they pull away, she breathes out tenderly, “god, where did you even come from.” She brushes Tobin's jaw with her thumb, graces it just slightly without pressure and feels how soft it is to contrast the kiss. “It's like you just dropped right into my life out of nowhere and I can’t believe where we are now.”

Something in Tobin's face changes, Christen notices. But she doesn’t think about it anymore when Tobin grabs her face and pulls her in again.

____

Christen stops in front of a flower shop four minutes before it closes on her way to Tobin's place. It had only been three days since the nightclub but she has never yearned to see Tobin more. The gentleman of a florist waits patiently at the register as she looks through their selection of flowers, unable to pick out any from her lack of knowledge in floristry. After a frustrating few minutes, the florist starts to see through her confusion.

“Young lady, for what occasion are you buying these for?” He asks in a thick European accent, Christen leans toward it being French. “A boy?”

“No, not a boy,” was all Christen said.

“Girlfriend?”

“No— well, yes, a girl, but we’re not in a relationship.”

“And would you like to be in a relationship with her?”

“... yes.”

He smiles knowingly, freeing himself from the counter to pick out a handful of pink tulips from a big basket in which they’re all laid out neatly. He brings it to the empty space on the counter where she assumes is designated to wrap up flowers and pull out a roll of craft paper from a space underneath. He tears a piece out to a perfectly cut square and rolls the flowers into an immaculate bouquet with measured hand movements, tying everything together at the end with a bow. Christen pays gracefully with more money than he asks for. “It's for making you wait,” she says, and he just smiles and wishes her good luck as she leaves the store.

She knocks on Tobin's door, clearing up her throat while she thinks of what to say to the woman and feels even more nervous than she usually does. Tobin opens the door with an expression that reads as shock at first, but then turns reluctant and finally somber. Christen presents her with the flowers and grows more afraid when Tobin's visage drops even further. She's almost too afraid to ask what’s wrong.

Tobin shows her to the couch and she obeys, sitting down as the other woman leans against a doorway, looking down at her squirming fingers. She starts, “Christen, I—“

They were interrupted by Tobin's roommates who passed by them, giggling in immature jest about a “girlfriend” of Tobin. She entertains her teasing a little, saying anything to make them leave faster. When the door finally closes and they’re alone again, Christen thinks she sees a tear escape her eyes.

“Tobin, what’s wrong?” She finds courage to ask.

“I think we should stop this.” 

A silence that was bound to happen strikes through, so prominent that Christen could hear her blood pumping in her ears. “Why?” She could only croak.

“Because I think I'm falling for you, but there’s someone I'm waiting for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i did disappeared for three months (im sorry), yes im very disappointed at how this chapter came out, we exist


	4. michicant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tobin has been hurt before

Tobin was 15 when she'd met Alex Morgan, a striker with brown hair, blue eyes, and one hell of a pair of legs for her high school's soccer team where Tobin played midfielder for. Despite the obvious imbalance in budgets the school cursed them with compared to the complacent American football team, they were good. Together, they were type of good that made coaches pull some strings so they can be on the boy's team, the type of good that led their team to win district then state and national championships, back to back. In their circumstances, they were thrust into having to know each other through frequently shared hotel rooms and being inevitable bus buddies during tournaments. But Tobin never minded. She never did to begin with. 

Tobin remembered Alex to be somewhere in between beautiful and ethereal, and everything else the Earth could hold. Try as she might, but who is she to forget the searing blue eyes of girl who promised too much and meant too little. Who exists to trouble the way Tobin's been taught to breathe. Who spins circles around Tobin's head like it's a childish thrill of a carousel to her, like she doesn't have Tobin's mind on lockdown just from a mere look at her.

There’s a memory that had always clung to Tobin's mind like the stubbornness of a sticker residue on plastic. 

Senior year state championship. The team’s cramped into two tiny vans the size of Rhode Island on a two-hour drive downtown to where the annual high school soccer championship was held. The two girls had the entire backseat to themselves, hunched over and legs sprawled like the vehicle belonged to the both of them. Alex relaxes with a toothpick hanging low on her lips, her eyes still piercing even when they’re fluttering close in a defeat to sleep. 

From the shotgun seat of the van, one of the forwards unzips open a guitar bag and pulls out the three-quarter-sized instrument. He hollers at Alex with a curt “ ‘ay, Lex!” and gets her attention. The guitar goes through two more passing hands before it gets to the back of the van. Alex stares at the imposing instrument attentively, admiring every crack in its veneer. She fiddles with the capo, placing it right smack in the middle of a fret, then she starts to play in experimental picking patterns, the strings buzzing under pressing fingertips and constantly changing chords. She sings, and it’s both parts angelic and undisciplined, like a classy Whiskey being served in a coffee mug. All conversations halted, and it’s impossibly quiet in a van full of teenage boys except for the humming of the highway. Tobin leans into her and feels the vibrations of each strings. And then she is startled in the wake of love. 

That night, after winning their last high school state championship, Alex improvised a wordless song with all the minor chords she knew, safe in the seclusion of their hotel room. Tobin leans into her again, just close enough; the pair impeccably lonely from the celebrations in the room two doors down. Tobin controls her breathing, remembering the warnings her parents spewed about dating a teammate, until Alex forgoes all taboos and kisses her square on the lips.

Tobin falls for Alex the same way one stacks a house of cards. First patient and slow, a constant build of tension that starts with nothing at all, yet is full of ease until she reaches a point where ignorance is no longer viable; the house ceases to stand its height, and that’s when her feelings crash down on her. But Tobin was unaffraid, she was just a girl of tender age then. And in all her inexperience, she'd probably gave too much of herself away to Alex — an offering for a request only for Alex to love her in the exact way she'd promised to.

In their hormonal teenage stupidity, they'd taken a tablet of acid together once and Tobin jokingly tells Alex her plans to become an addict just so their time together could feel like an eternity. In the high, Tobin had thrown up her palms and sang in a praise to her God for a high that lasts forever, while Alex lost her breath beside laughing. And in the years that passes in that span of mere hours, Tobin questions if she'd ever be this happy again. The inevitable come down that crashed onto her akin to tsunami waves on unassuming rocks seemed like all of her worst fears attacking at once. The panic attack made her grab Alex by the arms and made her promise that she'll never let Tobin be lonely.

She never meant to, but just as any teenager basking in the naïveté of first love, Tobin began to dream up a future with Alex Morgan. She fantasized about how they would rule the world together, Alex with her scratched up guitar and Tobin with her soccer ball. Perhaps Alex would start selling out tours in stadiums. She'll sing romantic songs with a band in the background, strumming her signature guitar in all its paint-chipped glories. When the last song ends she'll tell Tobin to come out from the side stage, and they'll kiss in front of the thousands, the Earth underneath them spinning from the force of the cheers. Or maybe Tobin will get her call-up to the national team, on a World Cup year. She'll play her heart out on the field and watch in exhilaration as her teammate score the championship-winning goal. Once the champion's jersey adorns her body, she'll run straight to Alex in the seating area and pull herself up for a kiss, with the camera clicks going all at once. Or maybe they'll have none of that, in their tiny apartment with a floor that creaks when she walks too fast. They'll be nobodies, but Tobin think that'll be okay. For as long as their hands finds each other, the world is at her feet. 

But just as it begins, their relationship came to dissolve like the sugar in her smoldering black coffee.

Sitting on the roof of an abandoned house that overlooked half of Portland (an activity they regularly do together when a striking sunset appears), Tobin leans her head onto Alex's shoulder as she's always done.

Alex interrupts one of the prettiest sunsets they've seen together to tell her that she chooses to go to college across the country on the East Coast, leaving Tobin to nurse an unspoken dream and a heart that's half broken, half mend together by hope.

On their last night together, Alex sneaks out from her bedroom and sprints her way to Tobin's waiting ajar window. They embrace each other and kisses for a long time, for the last time. Tobin tries to savor, hopelessly, of all the little noises Alex makes while she's under her. She tries and performs the thankless task of committing her lover's features into her brain, knowing full well of its inevitable dwindling. She felt awful. 

“One day,” Alex breathed after exhaustion finds them both, running a finger ever so lightly over the lengths of Tobin's forehead and temples, brushing aside any stray hair that might've stuck to her sweaty skin, “I'll come back, and our timing will be right.”

Alex leaves very early in the morning. Tobin doesn’t come to the airport with her.

Tobin was 18 when she falls in love with Alex Morgan. She's never loved anyone else since.

They try to keep in touch, through phone and FaceTime calls. It was, at first, a regular occurrence that goes from weekly; to, eventually, biweekly; and then, inevitably, none at all. Alex gets too distracted by whatever was on the other side of the screen. Tobin gets too dissatisfied with the inability to feel the warmth of her skin. Still, it crushes her how people fall apart.

Eventually, Tobin learns to be okay with the silence she receives when her finger meets Alex's name on her screen. It was college, and she was playing up a storm for UNC. For months on end, no one would ever lets her forget about the equalizer she scored for Tar-Heels and that game-winning penalty during the her senior championship against UCLA. Her name gets immortalized in how everyone will utter it out when talks about women's soccer surfaces within the vicinity of the school. Naturally, she rides that high into her first season with the Portland Thorns, where she had a phenomenal first season. 

She even learns to be fine after losing a third of her right leg's muscle functions when a drunkard ran a red light and straight into her vehicle. Her dear mother cried by her hospital bedside, for her right leg and all its potential now gone. Nevertheless, she cracks a smile before her mom could relearn how to; the lawsuit money she's gotten has been good to her, and her leg could still perform the utmost basic functions. She'll be fine, even if every other person felt the need to remind her upon every meeting how different it all could’ve been. 

Still, it gets so lonely at nights, not having someone to hold, not having warmth to greet her in the morning. The women she encounters, the ones she takes home or to hotel rooms after monotonous nights at the bar, they all knew what they were in for. She tells them all about it being a one time ordeal, thanks them with a good time, and uses the warmth next to her to dream about Alex. In the morning she'll leave wordlessly and pays for the room on her way out. If she's lucky, they'll never see each other again.

Or at least, that was usually the case, until she met Christen Press, who she grows fond of too quickly, too alarmingly. Tobin ponders how the woman kisses her with the same fire Alex ignited; how interchangeable it was, yet terribly brand new. Perhaps, it may even scare her, the rate in which she falls— no, maybe she wouldn’t use that word— the rate in which she feels attached to how the woman moves, how she smiles, how she creates conversation. After all, it took her years to realize she was in love with Alex, while with Christen it was only a matter of a greeting or two. And wouldn’t that frighten just about anyone?

___

Tobin wakes up involuntarily due to a uncomfortable growling stomach. There’s a warmth of an arm wrapped around her bare stomach, and if her belly could be quiet for just five seconds she could hear the woman's steady breath and feel the chest pressed against her back heave up and down. She groggily removes the arm from her stomach and groans, rubbing her eyes to adjust to the light. After a quick shower and attentive teeth brushing using the provided hotel toiletries, she steps out, fully clothed, to meet the eyes of the wide awake woman on her bed.

“You’re leaving already?” The woman asked sleepily, making no attempt to hide the disappointment in her voice.

“Yeah. Had a good time last night?” Tobin replies, not at all interested in an answer but fully out of customary.

“I did,” the blonde (Tobin hopes she doesn’t realize how she doesn’t remember her name) nodded, her cheeks reddened in agreement. “You could stay here with me a little bit longer, if you want.”

Tobin picks up the woman's clothes off the floor and places it on the bed in a thoughtful gesture, albeit shakes her head with a laugh, “No, I don’t think that would be good for any of us.” 

The poor woman's freckled face drops. Tobin gives her a mere shrug and money for a cab in an attempt at consolidation, and then disappears behind the door before the blonde could start asking for her number. She ends up stopping at the receptionist desk; firstly to pay, and also to greet the receptionist who's too unwillingly familiar with Tobin's visits to the hotel. It's a slow day for the hotel, so they joke around a little and Rose, the name of the receptionist, jests about how Tobin might be spending more time here than she does in her own bed. Tobin waves her off, genuine laughter bubbles within her, and on her way out she shakes the hand of the doorman who's comfortable with her enough to call her “Toby”.

Her stomach growls for another a long measure, as she walks back to her house. Checking to see if she's at the convenience of a grocery stores, Tobin decides to make a detour. It's rather a common occurrence, she rarely has the time nor energy to care for a homemade breakfast. None of the women who came home with her cared to stay for it, either. 

She's in the midst of holding up two flavors of Eggo waffles and comparing the price when a startlingly familiar voice called out: “Tobin?” 

With shaken hands, she turns around and then presses her nails deep into her palms to see if she'll wake up.

The voice she'd only heard in her dreams belonged to the woman she'd only seen in her dreams for the last decade. Even with minimal makeup, Alex looks even more stunning than she remembered a decade ago. All but the two freezes over. 

“Oh. My. God.” Alex is stunned, and deservingly so. Her jaw might be unhinged soon and Tobin couldn’t say she was in a better place. “Tobin—“

“You’re back.” Tobin's voice finally catches up to her shock, and she emits. “You’re really back.”

“Well, not for long, I'm only here for my sister's wed—“ 

Tobin crushes her in a hug. Alex melts into it and, soon enough, she could feel a spot on her shoulder soaking up some wetness. 

“Jesus,” Alex sniffles as she pulls away. “Never thought I'd be one of those people who cries at the produce section of supermarkets, but here I am.”

“Here we are,” Tobin corrects, laughing at her own ridiculousness as she, too, wipes her tears away with the sleeves of her hoodie.

“So, how— how have you been, I mean, what are you doing?”

“Oh, you know, just getting some waffles for my hungry self.” She gestures awkwardly at the chocolate chip waffles that she guesses she'll settle on. 

“Wait. You know what I'm just now thinking?” Alex raises her eyebrow suggestively, inviting Tobin to also look at her with confused raised eyebrow. “Is Blue Jay still open?”

A wave of nostalgia washes over the shorter woman. Blue Jay, the diner in which they've both spent many lazy afternoons together, dosing up on free coffee and decadent sweets. It's a name she hadn’t considered in— quite literally— years after Alex left and she had to stay away to avoid all the memories, then, gradually, she just completely forgets about it like how the chalk on her sidewalk fades. Frankly, she doesn’t know what her emotional response would be upon stepping inside it once more, and she won’t lie and say she wouldn’t be afraid. 

“I guess both of us will have to find out together, huh?”

____

Turns out, Blue Jay was the same as it had ever been, although there seems to be a drop in customers and Tobin could not figure out why, not when the prices haven’t been abused to hell and back like the other places. They choose to sit in a booth off to the side, not wanting to entertain the implication of warranted attention in the center booths. Tobin takes notice of how expensively Alex is dressed as she sets her costly purse down before sitting. Along with the long winter coat and leather stiletto ankle boots, Tobin decides that she looks incredible. An older waitress takes their orders. She's curt and lethargic, as if she knew there are better things out there for her to do, and yet she's here, taking orders in a dilapidated diner where the current customer count is less than five.

Alex ignores the menus presented by the elder woman and orders for both of them. Tobin looks at her impressively.

“You remember my order?”

“Duh, of course I do.” Alex rolls her eyes mischievously, “Kinda had to when you begged me to come here every single god damn day.”

Tobin grins shamelessly, feeling absolutely no sense of wrongdoing.

“So,” Tobin leans forward, moving her hand so the waitress could collect their menus, “how long are you here for?”

“ 'Bout a flash.” Alex replies unhappily, maybe even regretfully, “My sister's having her wedding at 4 today, with the church ceremony and all that. And— well— I figured... I had nothing left to stay for, so I booked my plane ticket for tomorrow morning.”

Tobin sinks back into the cushioned seat, “Right.” There's a pit in her stomach now.

“Listen, I didn’t think I'd run into you.” Alex tries to recover, “I thought you've left—“

The waitress interrupts her with two ceramic mugs and a steaming glass carafe of coffee, informing them that their food will be out shortly. Tobin silently thanks the interruption. 

“Do you think your sister remembers me?” Tobin changes the subject. 

“Oh yeah,” Alex answers easily, a smiling forming at the memories, “I don’t think she would ever forget all the pranks we pulled on her back then.”

“My god, remember the water balloons?” Tobin guffaws in agreement, fondly reminiscing the hilarity of the reactions they've gotten out of Alex's sister.

“Yes!” Alex pointed excitedly, “She was so mad. I was genuinely scared that she would cut me with the knife in her hand.”

“How did she forgive you so quickly?”

“Chocolate chip cookies, Tobin. Lots and lots of chocolate chip cookies.”

Tobin nods understandably.

“We were fucking hurricanes, weren’t we? Felt as if we could be anything. I never wanted us to slow down.”

Alex looks sadly, “Youth does that to everyone.” 

As if the weight of what she said meant absolutely nothing, Alex asks, “But, anyway, how are things going with you?”

“Just, you know,” Tobin takes a sip of awaiting black coffee, “doing some coaching for the local youth club, but it's off season so I found a job at a local warehouse.”

“I heard about your leg. I'm so sorry.”

“You should be more sorry that you ain't call to say something then.” Tobin says, she had no idea if it came off as good-natured or bitter. She had no idea if she'd meant for it to be good-natured or bitter.

Alex looks guilty, “I know.” She looks down at her own mug, suddenly more focused on stirring the sugar into it than eye-contact.

Tobin doesn’t ask her why, knowing fully the reasons would crush her. The waitress comes back with their food.

They eat quietly, the mood turning more delightful as they both satisfy their stomachs. The food wasn’t as delectable as she'd remembered it to be, Tobin will admit. But drown these pancakes with the default maple syrup and, well, she's gotten something a lot more swallow-able on her fork. When they're finished in record time, Alex uses her left hand to stir her coffee once again, the fork in her right hand lightly taps the plate to a song only in Alex's head. She's yet to take a sip. Tobin sees a band on her left ring finger.

“You married.”

Alex instinctively retracts her left hand, “yeah.”

“How long?”

“Two-and-a-half years,” Alex doesn’t say it with pride.

Tobin chooses to not say anything else about it, but her glance turns towards the idle jukebox in the corner of the restaurant.

“You remember that jukebox?”

Alex gives her a watery smile, “How could I forget? You used to love slow dancing to those songs.”

Wordlessly, Tobin stands from her side of the diner booth and walks towards the machine, the bubble tubes seems to call out to her. She digs through her pocket, finds a quarter and feeds the jukebox with it. Carefully, she flips through the limited selection of songs, gingerly pressing the combination of letter and numbers when she's done. 

The machine stays stagnant, no noise coming off it. The cook yells out helpfully from the open kitchen. 

“Ya gotta give it a lil’ kick, honey, she's old!”

So she does, and it rattles for a second, the sound of gears working again in months. Then the carousel holding the 7-inch records begins to spin, stopping once it finds the exact song, a mechanic arm picks out the record from the rest. The song _”Funny How Time Slips Away”_ by Wanda Jackson fills the restaurant.

Tobin sits back down on her side of the table. Once again, both are unable to say a word. Tobin sips her— now cold— coffee, feeling weirdly emotional by this old country song.

_“Heard you told him that you'd love him till the end of time._  
_Now that’s the same thing that you told me, seems like just the other day._  
_Ain't it funny how time slips away.”_

Tobin looks back at Alex, who avoids her gaze; she's gotten tears in her eyes but refuses to blink and let them fall down her delicate face. Similarly, Tobin feels its lyrics hitting all at once, the impact makes her rub the tears out with her thumb and forefinger, dragging them down the sides of her face. The song ends the same way it begins, without a word from the pair, just with the sounds of the needle retracting from the grooves of the record, and the clicking of it flipping back into place. 

Funnily enough, their waitress seems temporarily at peace in the presence of the song, smiling serenely as she hums along and sweeps the floor to its rhythm. Until— much to her dread— the song has to end and waitressing duty calls, she returns to her innate state, dropping off their check with a scowl.

Finally, it was Alex who decides to speak. “Come to the rooftop with me.”

Surprised to be reminded of so many nostalgia-inducing memories all at once, Tobin snaps her neck to look at Alex, “Why?” It's clear to her now that they should never speak again.

“Please.” Alex pleads. She reaches over to hold Tobin's hand with both of hers. Tobin wanted to pull away like it was a hot stovetop.

“It'll be good for us.”

____

The drive to the rooftop was filled with more awkward silence, the type that suffocates Tobin and makes her wants to roll down the window despite the freezing air bound to smack again her face to let out a bloodcurdling scream for some release.

Alex navigates the path perfectly, as if not a day had passed since they last spent the evening together watching the sunset as teenagers. Tobin tries to not think about what this means. The SUV stops short of a hillside, the exact path leading to the abandoned house she could so clearly see atop the hill. It's an uncanny embodiment of one's first thought when abandoned houses are brought up. A one story, poorly painted baby blue exterior, suddenly left off after only a quarter way as if its last owner was in the midst of painting during a hurricane and had to jump ship before it was too late. Vandalisms marred its wood planks, refusing to spare the uneven coating of paint that its previous residence had so obviously put effort into. It looks as sad as its ever been. Alex chuckles beside her.

“Wow, nothing really does change around here, huh?”

Tobin could point out a billion faults in that statement.

Alex slips off her ankle boots easily, chucking them behind her so carelessly that Tobin winces a little over the potentially expensive threading. She throws back her coat as well, leaving just a plain white T-shirt. Tobin looks behind to check on the items, until an instantly recognizable colorful guitar case catches her eyes.

“You brought your Pride n' Joy?”

Alex eyes the hard case, eyes crinkling at the reminder of an old nickname, “Yep, that's her.”

Tobin recalls back to a time when that guitar was the most expensive possession Alex had owned, and how she thought it was pretty funny to name it that so she could show it off to people as she asked them if they wanted to “see her pride and joy”. All of their best memories stored within the hollowed body interior, she wonders if the mahogany still remembers. 

“Come on, you have to bring her up there. Play me a song. I'll even carry it for you.” Tobin offers. “Please? For old time's sake?”

Alex looks reluctant. Tobin's about to just turn around and give up when—

“I'm just offended you don’t think I could still carry her up there.” She grabs the case forcefully and swings it around her back: a gesture of her faulty competitiveness. “I'll race ya! If you can still climb after all these years, Tobs!”

“Oh.” Tobin laughs, hopping out the car and shutting the door swiftly, “You're gonna regret that, Baby Horse!”

Tobin doesn’t let her regret it. She stays a few yards behind Alex on their climb up the hill. The trailing woman ponders if Alex ever thinks about the paintings on the surface of her hardshell case as hard as she currently is; the ones that Tobin had painted for her in their last summer together. Images of the greeneries of a soccer field, a soccer ball, and the colors of a sunset invades it, along with an imprint of two hands as well as their names, the latter of which looks like it had been forcefully scraped off. 

Alex pulls herself up with ease once they both reach the top. Tobin looks on impressed as Alex sticks out her tongue immaturely. Subsequently, she also pulls herself up, only doing so in half the time it takes Alex just to show off.

Sitting on the roof of an abandoned house that overlooked half of Portland, they rued, looking to chase the feelings they've been missing with no sunsets in sight. Alex plays a song as promised, but it sounded empty, being a cover of a popular romantic song instead of an original. Alex used to be one of the most honest songwriters she knew.

“Why'd you bring her here, anyway, all the way across the country?” Tobin asks after Alex stops singing. 

“My sister wants me to perform at the wedding, to— like— cut cost or whatever instead of having to hire a wedding band.”

“A one-woman show,” Tobin jutted out her bottom lip in approval, “Will it be your own songs?”

Alex shakes her head, “No... I haven’t written any songs in a long time.”

“Cool.” Tobin doesn’t press, “Play me another song.” And with that she leans her head against Alex's shoulder, another one of her favorite gestures. Alex sings again. And in the simplicity of Alex in her plain T-shirt, skinny jeans, and barefoot, it was just like those older years. It feels like youth.

“How's the view? I bet Portland doesn’t even impress you anymore after living in The Big Apple for so long,” Tobin asks good-naturedly.

“You don't know that, New York gets suffocating all the time, too.”

“You know what's funny? Even before we had our first formal conversation, I've always kind of knew you'd never stay here. You were so many things at once, like, you were so much bigger than any of us, and Portland, it never seemed like it could contain you.”

“I wish it could,” Alex replies, her eyes seemed to look far beyond any of the buildings within their peripheral. “I should’ve stayed.”

“You remember that night? Our last night together?” Tobin brings up, “You promised me that you'd come back, and our time would be right, you remember?”

There's a flash of recognition that crosses Alex's eyes, she raises her eyebrows and then laughs dismissively, embarrassedly. “Oh that? Gosh, I used to say so much shit back then, thinking I was all deep and shit. It was just teenage talk.”

Tobin's voice is hoarse, “I waited for you, you know.”

“Oh, Tobin...” Alex bows her head low, “you probably shouldn’t have said that.” She grabs her head, shaking vehemently as if a child denying a spoonful of medicine, “No. I didn’t want to feel this again, and you just made it real.”

“The last songs I ever wrote... they— they're all about you, Tobin.”

Tobin doesn’t have a reply. Alex worsens it by continuing. 

“I was hurting, Tobs, I was hurting real bad.”

“Stop it.” Tobin cuts her off brusquely. There's anger rising within her, and it'll get ugly if she went on. “You stopped calling, Alex. You promised me you'd at least make an effort to call. I mean, how hard could it be? I was willing to make time for you! I was gonna cancel plans, stay up late, do whatever the _fuck_ if it meant I'll hear your voice for fifteen fucking minutes! Why did you have to start ignoring me? And now you’re acting hurt? _You_ don't get to be hurt!”

“Don't act like you don’t know why I had to stop calling.” Alex retorts. “We were half way across the country. You needed to focus 110% of your attention to soccer. And I was a law major, for fuck's sake! I had to grow up, so quickly, all of a sudden. I couldn’t afford to be like you nursing this fantasy that a high school relationship would be forever in between kicking around a ball. If I called you, I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about you, for days on end, even. And they were forcing four law classes down my god damn throat!”

“But we could’ve been friends, that would’ve been good for me. And you couldn’t at least do that? All I wanted was a call from you, to tell me you’re okay, that maybe you’re over this but still interested in staying friends. For years! I just wanted to hear your voice and you _robbed_ me of that.”

“Oh, please,” Alex dismisses, “you really think we could be friends? After what we were?”

“You're fucking ridiculous. People stay friends after relationships all the father-fucking time. You're telling me you're not mature enough to handle that?”

“It's not that. No. Don’t patronize me. It's— it's... fuck!” Alex exclaimed, cursing with enough zeal to involuntarily move her fist with frustration, rocking back and forth as if she's being forced to say something she'd had all the intentions of keeping to herself. “It's that I still sing about you sometimes, with the songs I wrote when I— when we were in love, and my husband thinks that I only like to sing them because the melodies were pretty. That's why we could never be friends. And it's fucking awful.”

Tobin shakes her head in disbelief. She should’ve known better than to fall for a musician; because she'll find out then that they lie and cheat, and then they'll steal others' pain and turn it into their own. Write it into little songs and make a commodity out of your tears, and then to have people praise it when it speaks to them then take all the fucking credit. Or maybe Tobin is just jealous that they know how to deal with pain, regardless if it’s theirs or not, and make something fruitful out of it.

“Why did you really bring me here, Alex?”

“Because I think this is the last time we'll ever speak to each other.” Alex admits, like she was finally coming to accept its inevitability. 

“God dammit, I— I've already built myself this entire life in New York. It just came rushing in so fast and I couldn’t get the time I needed to assess my past with you. But it happened. And I've got a family there now. And Serv, he loves me, and I— I...” Alex is unable to say it, “I can't ever talk to you again because I've got a husband all the way across the country and it's been ten fucking years yet you’re still the only person I've ever loved. But I can't do that to him, he's too good to me.”

“I broke her heart for this.” Tobin cries regretfully, hugging her legs closer to an impossibly tight fetal possibility. 

“What?”

“I broke someone so good to me, for us to end up this way?”

“Tobin—“

“You should leave.” Tobin demands.

Alex pleads, “Can I still at least drive you back?”

“No, just... leave me up here. I need a few hours. Alone.”

Alex stares at her with the saddest eyes one could ever adorn. It stabs her right through the soul; no woman should ever have to look at anyone that way. But Tobin is full of regret, and it's not because of Alex anymore.

Alex speaks slowly, softly, “I hope you have a great life, Tobin. And I'm so sorry for what I did. You deserve so much more than what I gave you.”

She slides off the roof with a thud, guitar in hand. The musician leaves quietly, leaving Tobin to sit on the roof with eyes wandering off to nowhere. 

Tobin doesn’t really know what she's looking for up here, even with half of Portland baring its greatest at her observance. Perhaps for a familiar face in the thousands to look at her vicinity, and think of her as she's crying tears of remorse. Or just looking for the pieces of herself she'd lost in the search for validation from a worn flame.

The slope of the rooftop makes for a comfortable place to relax, and since her eyes have already grown tired from the useless tears, Tobin falls asleep in the sun. She has no idea how long she's gone for, but when she wakes, the sun had started to set. 

Alex was probably already at the wedding for at least a few hours, and Tobin is surrounded by the harshness of the cold, watching the sunset wash over her like a baptism for the first time without anyone by her side. Utterly, pathetically alone.

She makes it down the hill before it’s too dark to see. Without a purpose, she spends another hour walking through the city, always getting too close to this one apartment complex and then turning the opposite way. Ultimately, all the roads she took, all the extra steps her feet will later curse her for leads her back to the frequented bar. She demands for drinks as soon as she sits down.

The bartender tells her to pace herself by the fifth shot, and by the eighth a younger woman with curly hair sits down right beside her. She's tall, and pretty, and her flirty smile reminds her too much of Christen. She's the opposite of what Tobin needs at that moment.

“You look lonely.” The woman opens sultrily, without a greeting. “I've seen you around too many times, picking up women. All the women, never me.” She chuckles sensually, dragging nail down the length of Tobin's jaw. “You are _so_ cute.”

Tobin hasn’t said anything since she walked in, she does little to entertain the woman's audacity. Yet the intrepid one makes a move, inching closer to kiss on Tobin's neck.

Instinctively, Tobin closes her eyes. “Chris.” She breathe out lowly as the woman drags her tongue along her jaw. She's exactly what Tobin needs at the moment.

“That's not my name, cutie.”

“I don’t care what it is. You’re either her, or you’re nothing.” Tobin rasps, kissing her for real this time, the latter giggling triumphantly in between kisses.

Tobin thinks she's about to get sick of kissing when—

A fist. It was a fist that she felt connected against her left cheek. It sends her tumbling backwards, but still caught to her feet. There's yelling, a low, manly, ugly bellow, and then there's the grating screams of the shameless woman and the distant gasps of everybody else in the bar. The masculine yelling gets closer just as she feels a hard boot to her stomach, which actually sends her flying down to the ground. And then a punch, and another punch, in between which Tobin makes out the words “my girl” and “stay away”.

The bouncer comes to throw the outrageous pair out, first having to push through the gathered crowd interested in a petty fight. A few good Samaritans help her to her feet, even dusting her off. Countless questions asking for confirmation of her current state thrown around, as well as a few comments in mockery. Tobin pushes them all off, stumbling her way to the door and out, unable to stand the attention.

The bouncer stops her, “Wait, Toby, are you sure you wanna be walking home like this? Can I call you a cab?”

She ignores him, turning down the street and disappearing before he could catch up. She feels that her cheeks are wet, wondering if it's tears. But then again, so is her forehead, and her chin, and her lips.

She stops in front of a storefront, where the reflection on the huge window is clear enough for her to see the state of her visage. A split lip, bruised cheek, possible black eye, and a cut on the right side of her forehead big enough to let a trail of blood run down her face, split into two smaller trails, one of which stubborn enough to run all the way down to her neck. (And yes, the additional wetness on her cheeks were, indeed, tears.) The store clerk looks up from his phone, glancing around to check for customers, unfortunately laying his eyes on her through the window. The soundless sight of his startling was her cue to leave. 

She scares away half of the pedestrians luckless enough to be walking on a cold dark night next to her. None of them offers assistance, which she supposes might just be best for her current state of mind. And as all the best roads of Portland do, all of them leads her back to Christen's apartment complex. She stands affixed to the steps leading up to the main entrance, fiddling with her phone, which somehow miraculously survived the fight.

“Tobin?” Christen answered the phone on a rather hesitant note. Tobin couldn’t blame her. 

“Christen,” she sniffs, trying to cover up her congested voice with a cough, but it only made the suppressed sobs pour out of its threshold. Christen says nothing in the minute it takes for Tobin to stop crying.

“Can you come downstairs, please. I'm outside your door and I— I need... somebody— I need you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> um idk how to say this but i wrote this withkut an ending in mind (big no no i know) so i have no idea how to end this so preath may or may not end up together (im sure they will tho)
> 
> if anyone recognizes the 2 films referenced here i'll love you forever
> 
> listen to funny how time slips away (wanda jackson, not willie nelson). its a good song


	5. eros

There's something especially pathetic and lonesome in the air the way Tobin presses the phone so closely to her ears that a sliver of wind could fail to slip through, hunched over in her most desperate form. She listens to the angered way Christen breathes through the speaker, sounding muffled by the quality, obscured as if trying to see through murky waters. The sky had been the color of anger; heavy with rain, howling with wind. A clap of thunder jolts her out of her inebriated stance for a split second. It grumbles again, and subsequently, a shower of rain begins pouring, followed by a crescendo of complaints from people scrambling for a hideout. 

It couldn’t have gotten any worse now. Tobin feels even more mocked upon, by absolutely nobody but the power of the unknown.

“You're drunk,” Christen says after a bout of silence, there's blame in her tone, realizing the slur in Tobin's voice.

“It doesn’t matter. I'm not delirious. Just let me see you. Please.” Tobin begs.

The line goes radio silent once more, leaving Tobin sunken in her state of disparity. She rests her forehead against the entrance door of the building, exhaling loud, catching the lump in the middle of her throat, resisting the urge to dial again to plead for a glimpse of her face. It is there that she stood in her failures instead of leaving right away, feeling like she's about to cry again.

But, unexpectedly, it's about five minutes later when the hallway leading to the entrance lights up. It wasn't another roar of thunder that jerks her completely awake, but the figure guardedly ascending down the stairs wakes her as if she was slapped in the face with cold, cold water. 

Christen opens the door with a scowl and red eyes, but her façade drops immediately upon a closer look. 

“Jesus fuck, Tobin. Your face.”

She's rushing at her, and then her hand is oh-so-gentle underneath Tobin's chin, a vulnerable grasp as if touching a dried sandcastle, her eyes running across her blood-crusted face. Her breath is shaky, part from the anger that had since quickly subside, the rest from the immense sadness in how Tobin looks back at her. Was she the one to have broken this woman?

“I have to clean you up.” Christen pulls on Tobin's hand, leading her inside and away from the cold. “Can you still walk up the stairs?” She looks back for a confirmation. Tobin nods and lets herself be dragged.

Christen's hand doesn’t leave Tobin's even as the leading woman twists the doorknob open. Tobin stumbles inside, unsurprised by how tidy the living room looked. There's a wide-open window, stacks of papers neatly planted on the low coffee table, a ceramic ashtray right besides a gel pen, and an opened pack of cigarettes with few spilling out. The walls are decorated by canvases of generic manufactured abstract art— the ones she'd regularly seen at department stores— and little potted plants perched on a shelf. A faint smell of smoke enters her nose, soon to be overpowered by the petrichor of the rain.

“Kelley's asleep. I was just working on some paperwork from the office.” Christen gestures towards the beige couch, finally letting go of Tobin's hand, “Have a seat. I'm gonna get some first aid stuff.”

Tobin shuffles around on the couch, feeling fidgety and nervous. She wasn’t sure of what exactly, perhaps of the guilt that has yet ceased, or maybe it's because she wasn’t ready to be looked upon, not ready to be open about her feelings once again, not when moments ago it'd served her dirty. It takes a moment of pure quiet for her to start noticing the pain, the feeling of dried blood crusted on her skin once she tries to move a facial muscle. It made her wince a bit but was nothing she couldn’t handle. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees the bathroom lights go dark, and Christen emerges with a few medical equipments in hand.

“Can I have a drink?” She requests, “For the pain.”

She could see that Christen tries to conceal her hesitation for a moment. Wordlessly, she empties her hands of the first aids and disappears to the kitchen, coming back out with a scotch glass and half-empty bottle of vodka. She slides them towards Tobin but gives a pointed look as a warning. Tobin takes a sip, wincing as the alcohol seeps into her wounded lips, albeit feeling a calmness that only liquid courage could bring.

Christen rips open a small package of disinfectant wipe. She starts slowly at wiping away the blood at the base of her neck, moving upwards, gentle like a mother caring for her daughter's first wound. “What happened?” She asks in a whisper as if any raise in her voice would add more to the cuts.

“Don't worry about it.” Tobin only replies, trying to put up a stance to hide the sadness in her voice. 

While Tobin sits akin to a defiant orphan, trying to pass as being just fine when everything around her was crumbling, Christen stands for a better look at the injuries. From the heights, she's forced to look down at Tobin, and in return, the bloodied one gazes up. Coupled with the slew of negative feelings she was bombarded with, it all makes her feel incredibly small. The wipe reaches the source of the cut now, and she winces hard.

Christen hasn’t said much despite her usual conversational self, finding herself unable to make easy small talks to someone with trails of blood and a fresh black eye, to whom she had confessed her feelings to weeks ago.

“Have you been doing well?”

“As well as I could be,” Christen says with a laugh so humorless it might as well double as a dry sob.

Tobin breaks away from the care of Christen's hands, looking up to meet her eyes. Determined to make her apology right then and there: “Christen, I need you to know—”

“It's okay. You don't need to explain yourself right now. You're bleeding in several places, and we'll always have another time.”

Feeling a rush of shame, she nestles her head into Christen's stomach and feels a hand through her dampened hair. “Can you please tell me that I haven’t fucked it all up?” Tobin's voice breaks like a dam.

“You didn't, honey,” Christen assures her truthfully, tenderly. It's the strange juxtaposition of the sureness in her tone despite the softness in both her whisper and the way she's caressing her hair that gives Tobin an instance of ease. She drags another piece of cloth across her lips, cleaning away the stubborn streaks of dried blood. She's gotten Tobin's head in her hands, angling it at just the right angle to make the reach easier. Tobin gazes directly upwards, meeting her face and finds those godly eyes staring back. Green eyes, always with a hint of a smile, but not tonight. 

“Am I too old to still be feeling this lost?”

She feels the cloth stop against her skin, then Christen whispers sadly, “Maybe I'm too old to fall for someone like you.”

That cuts Tobin deeper than any open wounds on her face.

When the bandage is carefully placed over the cut on Tobin's forehead, Christen steps back and whispers “all done.” She sounds taut and of reluctance like she struggled to get the words out as to not end their time together.

“Did you walk here? Should I drive you back?”

“I don’t want to leave,” Tobin says before she could realize how that might be too much to ask. “Can— can I stay here?”

“We don’t really have a guest bedroom—”

“I can take the couch.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Please.” Tobin realizes how obscene the request is. She couldn’t even pinpoint why exactly she'd want to stay. But she knows that Christen wasn’t the person to say no to a bloodied face.

And Christen doesn’t. She looks a bit hesitant, but sympathy comes to the forefront. After cleaning up the scraps of medical packaging with Tobin's help, she tells the injured woman to stay put, coming back out with a thick blanket, pillow, a new toothbrush.

In spite of the generally comfortable couch, Tobin would be a complete fool if she'd expected sleep to find her easy tonight. Not even the pitter-patter of the rain could lull her to dream, though Tobin craves for the embrace of anybody. Loneliness has never found her well. She pushes off the blanket once she's gotten enough of soulless warmth and finds herself in the bathroom, with the initial purpose to inspect her newly cleaned wound, but ends up avoiding her reflection with red eyes, unable to face the person that she is in the mirror.

Watching from the window, the distorted shapes of various cars zoomed past on the street below. Tobin felt troubled. She was stuck on the emptiness she felt when Alex had told her the reason they couldn’t be. It wasn’t a heartbreak she felt, or at least not remotely similar to the heartbreaks she's read about in books, seen in movies, or heard about from friends. It wasn't a sudden bout of sadness so immense that it felt as though a clap of thunder had struck right through her heart and tore it apart. It wasn’t underserved resentment that she'd felt towards the person who wronged her. 

Was this all that a heartbreak is? Just temporary emptiness in a moment of reflection about how she'd wasted all those years for _this_? Why was it that her first thought immediately came to Christen when she should’ve been thinking about Alex and how much she'd hurt her? Did she really still love Alex when the scope of the heartbreak she felt was so minuscule? Or was she just holding onto this fantasy that she confused as love all this time?

This hurts her head. Tobin stumbles back onto the couch, holding her temples, massaging them. She direly wishes for sleep to find her, though she knew it would still be a long night.

______

Tobin wasn’t exactly a light sleeper. She'd proudly slept through the storm that was her roommates tearing up a video game in the living room, even through the ungodly sounds of a blender going off every 6am before her roommate leaves for work. But in her current fragile state of mind, the startled “what the fuck—” from a certain Kelley O'Hara promptly stirs her awake, leaves her feeling like she slept through a blink.

Kelley turns the lights on, storming forward, “Tobin fucking Heath. You've got some fucking nerves—“

She stops short, and Tobin hears another gasp when Kelley finally gets a good look at her face. She shakes the sleepiness out of her head, completely unable to open her right eye. She looks for the clock above the TV. It reads 5:13am. She's slept for a total of two and a half hours.

“Good morning, Kel.”

Kelley gets over her shock quickly and scoffs unsympathetically, “Save it, Heath. You. Me. Breakfast. I'll give you 15 minutes to get ready. You have _so_ much explaining to do.”

Tobin raises both her arms up, a little “fine, I'll do everything you say as long as you don't kill me” gesture of compliance. She does get ready in record time, ignoring the sting in the bandaid-less cut as she splashes her face with cold water.

She joins Kelley in the latter's car, a fairly new SUV with patches of garbage everywhere but the driver's seat. Tobin spends a good minute pushing everything from her shotgun seat to the back before getting in. 

“I won’t ask you about your face because I feel like that’s your business, and I don’t really go out for breakfast, only doing this so we don’t wake Chris up, so you'll have to give me directions to where you wanna go. Asshole.”

Tobin hums, smiling a little at the childish way Kelley expresses her anger, but not letting the other see since she was supposed to still look scared. She starts by giving her the directions to the only diner she knew by heart.

“You still surfing these days?”

“Kel, it's winter.”

“Right.” Kelley agrees, huffing in a tantrum, “Dude, I'm so mad at you I don’t even know how to make small talks with you anymore. Look what you've done.”

“I mean, it's still pretty early,” Tobin says, looking up at the pitch-black sky. “Turn left at the stop sign.” 

They fall in a silence. Kelley offers to turn on her morning playlist. Tobin had no other choice but to agree. The next thing she grows aware of is the sound of aggressive trap music blasting through the subwoofer. Kelley mouths along to the artist, almost matching the comical growl in his voice. Tobin watches on amusedly, hoping Kelley wouldn’t lose control of the vehicle in an effort to headbang to sharp electronic snares. They make a final turn and end up in an almost empty parking lot.

Despite the amount of time she's been here, Tobin has yet to visit the diner at such an uncomfortable hour. Her usual waitress wasn’t working yet, and the stranger currently taking her order seems to be avoiding her gaze in fear. The waitress, a woman who doesn’t seem older than a college freshman, greets them with two coffee mugs and a: “Hey there, how are we doing this morning?”. Tobin had to turn her head away to physically stop herself from an unnecessary joke.

“Dude, I think you scared our waitress,” Kelley muses with mirth after watching the poor woman scramble away with their menus and orders. “That's hilarious, by the same girl who ran all the way across the street because of a wasp?”

“You're acting like it’s an irrational fear, those assholes _sting_, for no damn reason,” Tobin scoffs.

“I mean, what does she think you're gonna do to her? You probably can’t even see right now.” Kelley laughs, sweetening her coffee with two packs of sugar in addition to the three creamer cups she'd added earlier. Tobin looks on in disgust. “Tobin, if you were to close your left eye right now, would you be able to see how many fingers I'm holding up?” She teases further. Tobin just laughs sarcastically.

Their food comes a lot quicker than what Tobin was used to, probably from the lack of traffic the place is getting from such early hours. Even Kelley seemed impressed. She digs into her food immediately, an order of the same omellette Tobin and Christen had ordered weeks ago, boisterous as a hungry teenage boy.

“Wait. Tobin, this is amazing.”

A triumphant smile finds Tobin's lips. “Thank you! I knew I wasn’t crazy for liking the omelette here so much.”

When Kelley was finished with her entire meal, Tobin was still halfway through her order of eggs and hash browns, growing cautious of how quickly Kelley is downing her candy-coffee. The excitable woman arranges her empty plates and utensils in one pile before throwing down her napkin and gets serious within a blink.

“Tobin, you know I didn’t make you come here to talk about the weather.” The smile disappears from the creases of her eyes, Kelley looks properly protective and earnest. “What the fuck is up with you? Why go around breaking her heart?”

Tobin stops chewing her hashbrowns, diverts her gaze, and swallows slowly. She suddenly longs to run away, finding difficulty in speaking and takes so long to provide an answer that Kelley nudges her foot from underneath the table as a warning.

“It's Alex.”

Kelley shifts her glance, “She came back?”

“Well, no. I— I turned down Christen for Alex. I know what you’re gonna say. But I loved her years ago and I was _so_ happy. And then she went away, it felt like she took everything with her. So I waited. 

At this point, I— I don't even know what the fuck it was that I waited for. I think I just wanted some closure. It felt open-ended how things were left, and I just had this stupid, stupid idea that I needed closure, a final say, just anything at all, to finally be “free”. I don’t know what she would've said, and I didn't even know what I wanted to hear from her. Just an ending, that's all, like— I wanted her to release me. And yes, she did come back yesterday but none of it felt like freedom. It felt like regret.”

She ran her hand through her hair frustratedly, “It’s gonna sound so fucking dumb or whatever, but I thought what I did was the best for Christen. I couldn’t be with her when my mind was still occupied by how only Alex could give me back the happiness I deserved. But more importantly, for years I confused some pretty memories of first love as real, still burning love. What if I was mistaking my feelings for Christen as something different and end up breaking her even more? Really, it was happening so quickly. I’ve never thought of a love that could develop over such a quick period of time. How can I be sure?”

Kelley is uncharacteristically quiet, still sporting an unresponsive glare as she listens. But then she unexpectedly groans loudly and throws her hands over her face, resulting in Tobin alarmingly shushing her, looking both ways embarrassedly.

“Oh, you dumb, stupid, fucking child. What am I going to do with you.”

“The waitress is staring,” Tobin warns through gritted teeth.

“I’ll just tell her how much of a tool you are and she’ll probably applaud me.” Kelley rolls her eyes, “Dude, there is no such thing as concrete in love. You're trying to, like, figure out the science of it, of which there are none. There's no one way to love someone. It’s a gut feeling, it comes naturally. And you might not yet, but I do know the way you speak about Christen, all the fucking time, it's infuriating, how oblivious you are, and I know the way your eyes change when she’s around.”

“But what if my feelings are fleeting?”

“Well, that could be the case. But it also might not be. That’s love. It’s the most rewarding feeling in the world, but it doesn’t come without risks, as are all things. It’s its own whimsical thing, and you just need to trust it.” Kelley explains, slowly but vehemently, as if it'd be her last wish on earth for Tobin to understand every single word she meant. 

“Damn, Kel.” Tobin muses, appearing impressed, “Where’d all this wisdom come from?”

“Must be all the damn meditating Christen’s been making me do with her.” Kelley groans. “But listen, Tobs, you’re my friend, and I love you and all that stuff. But Christen is my _best_ friend. And if, for some reason, the stars don’t align for you two, try not to hurt her as much as you already did.”

Tobin nods obediently.

“Okay, but I have to ask you something, though.”

“Shoot.”

“Were you really gonna beat me up if I didn’t already have my ass beat?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Kelley confirms matter-of-factly.

“And you don't think I was gonna fight back?”

“Listen, buddy, I can arguably beat you in a fight.”

“You know I used to be an athlete right?”

“My arms are getting bigger than yours, hon.”

“I will simply kick you with my good leg.”

“You’re not looking at the full picture, Tobs. You were half asleep after getting barely any shuteye, while I slept a full eight hours _and_ I would’ve been up fifteen minutes by that time.” Kelley slaps the table excitedly, “your reflexes would’ve been slower than a sloth. It's tactical over physicality, superstar.”

“Whatever, gym rat.”

They don’t talk about anything else, just focused on Tobin to finish up her food so they can leave with enough time to get ready for work, while Kelley requests another coffee much to the other’s disapproval. The young waitress hands them their check, still unable to fully look at Tobin without cowering, but they end up making eye contact and Tobin tries to grin her friendliest one, finally, the waitress manages back a thin shell of a smile. Kelley insists on the bill, so she takes on the tip, leaving a rather generous amount. Kelley drops her off at the house, and Tobin uses the hour before work to take a long, scorching shower that consists of more pondering than scrubbing, she ends it by tending to her wounds in the mirror.

At work, her coworkers, a bunch of beefy men with more tattoos on their bodies than hair on their heads, took notice of her scuffled look. A few pats roughly on her back, approving of her toughened demeanor. She gets her body ready for the loading section, taking on the same amount of boxes and lifting despite helpful offers from the macho men. On her first of two breaks, she pulls out her phone from a front pocket, scrolls down to her last text thread with Christen. The last message sent between them was the invitation to the nightclub. Tobin swallows away regret as she types: “**can we talk over coffee on saturday?**”

_______

Saturday hits her quicker than the way her feet used to strike the soccer ball. Tobin wakes up two hours earlier than the usual weekend and spends an extra half hour at the gym if not to worry despite her aches from the influx of orders at the warehouse. She contemplated, practicing over what she would say to Christen once they’re face to face, doing it so many times that it'd lost its shapes and sizes, turned rancid and nonsensical. She's made her roommate rehearse the worst-case scenarios, going over the most hurtful things the other woman could possibly say to her, and then she'll learn to forgive, understanding that those things won't be out of menace but of pure unadulterated emotions.

She'd like to dress nicer than the look she usually sports (the hoodie, the sweatpants, and headwear, there will be none of that today), to show Christen that there was effort into this meeting, that she cares, so much, but not overly so that it's overkill. She spends a good half of an hour in the closet, pushing aside loose pieces of clothing and ends up with an ironed white T-shirt with a pair of slacks, a light jacket, and loafers to tie it all together.

On her way to the cafe, a clairvoyance made her decide to take the more local route, sensing a chunk of traffic coming up on the main streets. There's a familiar tune blowing through her stereo, of an old blues rock song with the stereotypical twang of the distorted guitar and flamboyant cry of the lead singer. It's suddenly made her think of Christen, as does most things these days. She's become more familiar with the frequency of how often she comes to mind, intermittently, still, it always manages to catch Tobin off guard.

The coffeehouse chosen by Christen was an apt choice that seemed to fit the woman's taste like a tailored shirt, complete with their $6 cup of black coffee and sample-sized desserts that costs more than her average meal. Tobin smiles at the waiter adorning a well-manufactured smile that could’ve fooled anyone as being genuine, declining his offer to take an order to wait for company. It didn't take long for the figure of Christen to cross the frame from the corner of her eyes, oblivious to the blatant stare Tobin throws at her from the other side of the one-way glass window. When the wind chimes above the entrance door rings of a new customer, Tobin finds herself struggling to breathe. 

Christen strides, a strut that holds all air from visitors of the ostentatious café, only allowing for a release when she (and she alone) felt like it. It might’ve even looked like she was gliding, lifted by the sheer confidence in her steps. Her curls, left untouched today, obey the wind, bouncing faintly at each step. Dressed in a simple tucked in shirt, jeans, and an elegant coat, Tobin knew she won't be making it easy for her.

“Have you been waiting long? I apologize, there was some unexpected traffic on the way.” She sets down her sunglasses and slides into the seat opposite of Tobin, who shakes her head. It's an odd thing to mention, as she wasn’t late. Tobin might've been here twenty minutes before the agreed-upon time, but Christen was still ten minutes early. 

The waiter finds their table again, Tobin merely calls out a black coffee, and, inexplicably, a red velvet cake; Christen orders a double shot of espresso.

“How's the face?” She asks, eyes roaming at where Tobin knew was only the discolored blotches on her face, still, it felt as if she was trying to dig so deep into her psyche that she could probably write a thesis on it. Tobin wants to avert her eyes, feeling hotness behind her ears at imploring eyes holding her captive. They left her in the purest state of breathlessness.

“Better.” That was all Tobin could squeak out.

But then Christen switches the topic, her voice deep with emotion, “You're very good at making me think about you, Tobin,” she says with a self-deprecating ring. “Just when I thought I'd finally stopped having these dreams about you, you show up at my door like a Broadway entrance. You beg to be a stain on my mind. You... just ruin me all over again.”

“You have a lot of explaining to do.” Christen reminds with a sharp look that she poorly tries to pass off as mere impatience.

“I know. I— I don't want you to hate me.”

“More than how much I've briefly hated you for breaking my heart?” Christen chuckles, “That's not possible.”

“I'm so sorry.”

Christen shakes her head, “My immaturity was short-lived. That anger I felt towards you was childish. I felt entitled. And I shouldn’t have been. Entitlement implies an expectation to be met, of which there was none because expectations require something to be built upon, and we were nothing to each other to begin with. The fault was mine to have expected anything. But I'm old enough to accept when things don't go my way. I just wanted an explanation, Tobin.”

Tobin stares at her, robbed of a voice. Overcame. All those rehearsed scripts she's spent hours on memorizing now dissolved like steam, leaving her mind a blank slate. The waiter brings them their order, leaving directly after sensing the tension at their table. Christen leans back and sips from her cup easily, laid back as if inviting Tobin to take her time.

“I wasted time.” Tobin begins, with a breath that she breathes out from nervousness, “I was waiting for this woman I once loved on a reason so precarious that by the time I've fucked everything up, it's all so thin and flimsy that I realized that I can't even tell what it was that I've waited for. I thought it was love, but it was the furthest thing from it.”

Christen now looks just as stunned as Tobin was moments ago, perhaps not expecting the bold declaration. In a self-deprecating thought, Tobin wonders if she was really surprised that she was capable of loving. She gestures Tobin to continue.

“When— when she told me the definite, that we can't be together, my first thought, it came to you. I don't want to admit that I knew what that meant.”

“I should've done so many things differently.” Tobin ruefully professes, “I've never been good with emotions and all that shit and I thought I could do away with just suppressing them. I'm so tired of that.”

It seems that something melts in Christen, a stir of understanding, as she releases the mug from her hand, bringing her hand to swipe at her lips difficultly, still staring straight into Tobin's soul. If she could, she'd beg for the grip of that stare to be loosened, just for her a chance to breathe again. Christen hoarse out, “I could’ve sworn that you were falling for me, that night at the club. The way— how you looked at me... god, I thought I was wanted. But then when you said that to me with those flowers in my hands, I thought to myself, have I read this all wrong? Did you only ever see me as a one night stand?”

Tobin shakes her head vehemently in deny, eyes watering at the monstrosity in how she'd made Christen feel. “No. You could never just be a one night stand to me.”

She takes a sip of her coffee finally, the steam still rising in front of her peripheral. She notes how every aspect of Christen seems to be birthed from the beauty of all their surroundings, like her liveliness that matches the trees being breathed to life by the winds of Portland, and the multifaceted boldness from glistening neon lights of a nightclub. Now, likewise, Tobin notices the goodness of Christen that appears to stem from the features of the coffeehouse, from the visceral contrast of the white frosting to bright red velvet cake and the lustrous scent of coffee. The morning sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling window hits her face at just the right angle and covers just the rights areas, leaving the rest to be softened by the shadows of the dimly lit café that begs to be understood, to be explored, and—

Oh god. 

She's in love with Christen, isn't she?

“I—” Tobin begins with dry lips, seeming to jump right out of her epiphany. Christen looks back at her concernedly.

“I have— I've feelings for you, Christen. Lots of it.”

“Oh.” Christen gapes. Then she smiles, the first Tobin's seen since— well, god knows how long— looking outwardly pleased.

When the last drops of espresso pools at the bottom of her cup, Christen startles a bit when her phone disrupts the reflective silence shared between them in the midst of a crowded café. With an apologetic look, she turns the screen towards Tobin to make sure the latter know the caller was her boss, before slipping away from their table and out the door, a cigarette already hanging below her lips.

So now Tobin is left all alone, accompanied only by the blurted confession that begs to be rewind. In that valiant moment, it felt like, then, the only moment in which she'd known no fear, only to recluse back to horrible doubt that Christen would scoff at such clumsy profession. The space between her fumbled words and Christen's bewildered stare could have cost her years and years, the tension of it all. But then the tender woman smiled, and Tobin felt as if she's tossed ten feet into the air. 

She takes a bite out of the slice of cake, reluctantly admitting its superior taste while still rejecting the ludicrous price. She pays for the meal with a $20 bill, wanting out of the café, knowing Christen was already finished with her coffee. She shoots Christen a text, letting the other know that she's paid for everything and that she's on her way home.

A hand catches her by the elbow from the windowless side of the coffeeshop, just as she was about to walk away unsuspectingly to where her sedan was parked. She wasn’t able to pinpoint from when she'd grown so accustomed to such vague features as the warmth of one's hand, but before the perpetrator even utters: “Tobin, wait!”, and before she even starts turning around heedlessly, she was already finding herself hoping to meet emerald eyes.

Christen had a cigarette burned near its end in between her teeth, and she speaks with it carelessly balanced on her lips, bouncing up and down to the enunciations of her words. The force of her initial tug had Tobin standing perilously close, such is that she reckons if the damn cigarette wasn't between them, the space would soon be closed by her finger underneath Christen's chin asking for a kiss.

“I have to leave now,” Christen says, putting out the stick using the outdoor ashtray present within arm’s reach. “But I'll be at the usual bar tonight, at 8. Would— would you, I guess, care to join me?”

______

Despite the stereotypical dim lightings of a dive bar, Tobin feels she would be burned alive, if not from the tungsten and neon, then the simmering forest fire in the pit of her stomach would soon reach the skin and set her ablaze. She's uncharacteristically nervous, constantly tugging on the neckline of her hoodie and fixing the tilt of her beanie. 

She's done this before: walk up to the bar with her head the height of Olympus like it's nobody's business, order a drink light on alcohol, and scan the vicinity for wandering eyes of ladies with a penchant for a nightly venture. Ask her about her day, offer to buy a drink. Smile like she's untroubled, swirling the drink suspended between a bashful stare. Repeat once a week, and wake up feeling the same emptiness. It all came easily to her. But with Christen, well, nothing about her ever really came easy.

Tobin picks her apart in the midst of an animated crowd with ease as if she'd had a spotlight over her head. The effortlessly beautiful woman had her lithe back to the bartender, leaning against the countertop with her elbows resting on the surface, a beer hanging loosely from her left hand. Christen seems to be looking around, swallowing lumps of nervousness down her throat. As if by a connection, her head turns as Tobin walks closer. Now, the strain in Christen's face suddenly gone, replaced by a smile that screams she's got something to prove. 

Beer abandoned on the counter, now she's making her way towards Tobin. The low bass-heavy music of the establishment has started to drown out, now there's silence all around. Intimidated by the presence, the latter has since stopped in her tracks and wonders what kind of small talks could be made between them. 

A greeting hangs from her lips, only to be consumed by the loudness of gestures when Christen wordlessly wraps her up in the kiss of her lifetime. The world spins around them, the fire from within slowly dissolves to sparks that ignite fireworks, a tingling feeling of adrenaline and happiness rings deep. 

This kiss feels different than any she'd ever sought out. Perhaps because there's meaning to it now. 

Christen tastes of smoke and stout beer and cherry chapstick. An ill-fitted combination that shouldn’t work but does because it is unique to Christen's, wholly hers. Tobin drinks it up until space woefully finds them again, tongue tingling with the bitterness of her habits.

And when Christen looks at her again, it was as if both of them are looking at new people, borne out of sudden revelations and realized feelings, a little older than before. 

And, god, Tobin feels intoxicated, especially when Christen is gazing with that twinkle in her eyes, one of mischief, of fulfillment, of _want_. 

Especially when she croons, “Wanna go back to my place?”

____

The trip back to Christen's apartment was a blur, particularly because of wandering hands from two perpetrators that makes it hard to even focus on directions. Fueled by a newfound rash, the pair could barely keep their lips cold on the elevator ride, and Tobin prays for any innocent bystanders looking to ditch the stairs.

Christen flings her door right open, not caring for the noise it produced or the possible damage on her drywall. The two all but sprints to the bedroom. Christen has her shirt already over her head. 

Once Tobin's back crashes the mattress, Christen hurriedly finds the belt loops of Tobin's jeans and pulls them down, revealing a pair of unicorn-patterned boxers. It stops her in her tracks.

Christen blinks once. Twice. Then she snorts out a boisterous laugh.

“Hey,” Tobin yelps, her face once flushed with arousal now red with embarrassment, “don't tease. You’re ruining the mood.”

“I'm sorry, _I'm_ the one ruining it?” She chaffs. “And not the fact that the sexiest woman I've ever seen in my entire life is wearing— shockingly in character— unicorn-themed underwear.”

“Don’t!” Tobin whines, but takes off her shirt and pulls Christen in for a kiss anyway, “I didn’t know I was gonna get laid tonight, alright?”

Christen smirks tauntingly, “I don’t hate it, I'll tell you that.”

Tobin smiles, helping Christen out of her jeans, “Now, let's talk about how you think I'm the sexiest person you've ever seen.”

______

The first thing Tobin notices when she wakes followed by tinted cheeks is the ashtray on the bedside table, where a cigarette was put out, the same one they had shared last night after toe-curling orgasms. She could close her eyes right now and see the image of last night. Of Christen propping herself up on the bed with an elbow, feeding Tobin the cigarette as the latter lies on her back, their skin touching as if they’ll burn otherwise, her finger tracing through the reddened bruised spots on the green-eyed woman's collarbone. She could even feel the fingers in her mouth as the cigarette was pulled away, licking and tasting a piece of her own.

The second thing she notices is the empty space where her arm should be draped over. It makes her heart drop a little. She wonders if this is how it feels.

A sigh of relief exits her mouth as Tobin catches onto the faint smell of pancakes and eggs, accompanied by brief segments of a pop song performed very enthusiastically by Christen.

There's a tingling feeling on her right shoulder where she knew bite marks were left. She touches it lightly and smiles to herself. She cleans herself up with a shower and meticulous dental care in a record time powered by a will unbeknownst to her.

Tobin makes her presence to the kitchen known by whistling a harmony to the pop song that Christen sings. The cloud of glorious curly hair doesn't even turn around, just giggles sweetly a greeting of: “Good morning, baby. My singing woke you up?” She's wearing nothing but boy-short underwear and a huge button-down shirt that's _definitely_ not buttoned. Through its thin fabric, Tobin could see her braless back. 

“No.” Tobin beams, “Just woke up missing you.”

Drawing herself close enough to wrap her arms around Christen's waist, she contently rests her chin above the deceptively toned shoulder. She whistles the song again, swaying back and forth forcing Christen to move along with her. Tobin smiles at the sound of her half-laughing-half-scolding to stop messing up the pancake flipping. 

A sudden realization comes rushing in that this feeling is completely new to her. She’s never stayed with a woman long enough in the morning for breakfast with her, and maybe the other never cared, either. And it’s this slew of new feelings to wake up and witness the sight of someone caring for her. To wake up and feel like someone is waiting for her, and that she’s no longer alone. They overwhelm her in the greatest of ways.

As Christen wards off thieving hands in order to plate the pancakes, trying hard to sound stern but ends up sounding so damn cute that they both bursts into laughter anyway, Tobin asks herself if this is what she wants forever to look like. And as Christen gives in to the little pecks and feeds her a pancake to munch on, she finally realizes that whatever she’d looking for in all those years of misguided sex and feelings, was as simple as the woman in her arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heelo. im sorry for the wait. its been kind of crazy bc i just graduated high school or whatever and i also hated how this fic and chaoter turned out. thats why ive been holding onto it to make changes (and also bc im ashamed of it). but i have to go back to work this week and that takes up 60 hours of my week (and also why the ending was so fukcing rushed), so i figured i couldnt hold this monstrosity hostage any longer
> 
> pls leave any comments. i dont care much for kudos, but comments are what motivates me to write.
> 
> also happy pride month. pride as we all know it today would not be made possible without the efforts of black trans women. consider donating to help out homeless black trans women or help out Black Lives Matter for free in the second link
> 
> https://www.gofundme.com/f/homeless-black-trans-women-fund
> 
> https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/


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